


Bet me love

by Kinkydrarry (Darryslut)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama, Fluff, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 12:40:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 52,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10876983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darryslut/pseuds/Kinkydrarry
Summary: What happens when Harry says okay to a bet , the bet happens to go without sex for a month.Harry is a sex God !





	1. Chapter 1

ALL BETS ARE OFF

Chapter one

Harry Potter the Sex God

Harry Potter sauntered into the Great Hall with a swagger that should have been poncy, but for some reason was just plain sexy. He was extremely late, in a fashionable sense of course, for breakfast, owing to a very Long Night.

He glanced around and smirked complacently. He had rather a lot to smirk about, he supposed, taking in the large number of eyes that shifted unerringly to mark his entrance, and the somewhat lesser but still gratifying number that lingered on his...er, attributes.

It wasn't an easy job being the Gryffindor sex god extraordinare. But, it had its perks.

Wandering over to the Gryffindor table, Harry languidly seated himself between Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley, who had, as always, strategically left him a place. Hermione mumbled a greeting but didn't look up from her copy of "How to Transfigure your Loser of the Month into the Man of Your Dreams". Ron was going to need to keep an eye on that one. Ginny didn't actually manage to get out a single syllable today; instead, she blushed profusely and turned back to her oatmeal. Harry hid a smile. Some days were better than others with Ginny - hell, she had even managed a 'hi' yesterday. However, she couldn't be expected to get that far today.

Today, Harry was wearing his tried and true Sexy Black Outfit. The results were predictable.

Ron was the only one in the vicinity to give Harry a decent smile.

"Morning Sunshine," he chirruped sweetly. "Bit late this morning eh? Bit of a long HARD night??" He then sniggered.

Harry sighed.

For some reason, Ron still thought it was amusing to make irritating and unsubtle sexual pseudo-connotations at the breakfast table.

With the amount of 'long, hard nights' Harry had put in over the past two years, one would have thought he might have recognised the redundancy.

But then, Ron was Ron. And he was still Harry's best mate. So Harry gave him the requisite smirk, and replied, "Yeah."

Ok, so that didn't have the wit and more subtle sexual pseudo-connotation you were expecting, but it was early god-dammit and it had, after all, been a Long Hard Night.

"So who was it last night?" Ron asked. "She was loud."

Harry had long since figured out that the use of silencing charms on your bed curtains didn't necessarily keep your horny roommates from listening in on your nocturnal activities.

With a token pretense at gentlemanly hesitance, he smiled and replied, "Err...I really shouldn't tell you - It was Whatsername from Hufflepuff, you know, the one with the amazing-...."

Harry'd have gone on in that vein for potentially some time, but was rudely interrupted by Whatsername from Hufflepuff storming into the Great Hall on cue, all dishevelled and looking like she had just fallen out of someone else's bed. Which she had. It was all very sudden and coincidental-like.

Her eyes lit on Harry and she actually snarled.

"Harry James Potter, how DARE you leave me without saying goodbye this morning!"

"Oh, bollocks," Harry murmured morosely. It really was a tough job being a sex god.

She was stalking over now, hands balled into fists and looking like either an avenging angel or a ripped-off prostitute. Or something halfway between the two.

"D'you have any idea of how it FEELS to have the best sex of your life, and then not wake up next to that person in the morning?? How could you just LEAVE? Didn't it mean anything to you? Don't I mean anything to you?"

This was a potentially nasty one, mused Harry. Was it a trick question? Or was it one of those questions that guys always get wrong, no matter how they answer, like "do these robes make my arse look fat?" He never did figure out the answer to that one.

"Hrm," said Harry eloquently, with a charming smug smile that usually made them swoon and stop talking immediately.

"That's all you've got to say for yourself?? You've broken my heart and you can't even come up with a decent sentence? You're a complete BASTARD, Harry Potter, and I hate you, I hate you, I HATE Y-..."

Harry lost his non-existent patience.

"Well, if that's how you feel..." Harry said, a mocking pretense at unhappiness fading behind a cheerful smile, "Why don't you run along? Surely you can't want to be in the same room with me..."

The Hufflepuff looked at him with disbelief.

Harry grinned. "I'm crying on the inside," he said with upmost sincerity and conviction.

He then started forking up scrambled eggs nonchalantly.

The Hufflepuff burst loudly into tears and ran from the room.

Harry watched her go for a moment, then yawned and turned back to his eggs.

Hermione looked up, a disapproving expression on her face. "Harry, that was unkind."

"Look, Mione, if I wanted whining at the breakfast table, I'd've brought a Jack Russel, wouldn't I?"

Ron sniggered.

Hermione frowned.

Harry relented, "Okay, fair enough, the sarcasm was probably over the top, but I told her from the start that there would be no strings attached. You know I can't get involved with anyone...Voldie could come back and then I might get Dead! And then where would Whatsername be, hmm? Very Sad, that's what." Harry sighed theatrically.

Hermione ignored him as was usual, and proceded to lecture him on the important points of feminine emotion and how to circumnavigate them.

Harry tuned her out and, with the most mocking bored expression on his face, surveyed the hall. Some were looking with unfeigned curiosity, some with admiration, and a few with anger. Oddly enough, most of those were female Hufflepuffs. Well, they'd get over it.

Only one pair of eyes, rather beautiful ice grey in a porcelaine face, stared at him with absolute and utter loathing. Harry stared them down, and they dropped away. Harry didn't know whether to feel superior or bereft.

* * * *

Across the room at the Slytherin table, Draco Malfoy growled. Bloody Potter and his theatrics, he thought bitterly. Can't even get one peaceful breakfast around here without one of Scarface's groupies making a scene. What in Merlin's name do they see in him anyway?

Draco looked at Harry. It was becoming a habit. Tousled black hair that begged for hands to tame it, sooty lashes outlining those green, green eyes that flashed and brooded beneath sharp black brows, the bone structure of some sort of godlike thing, and a body that should have been hewn from marble and placed somewhere for all to gawk upon and say 'yes, that is pretty much the most attractive body I have ever seen'.

Draco looked away again. Bloody Potter. How unfair that he should be so hot, when he really was such a knob.

That wasn't to say that Draco himself wasn't pretty. He was. But Potter was Hotter (as someone once rather irritatingly pointed out using flashing badges). And that pissed Draco off a whole hell of a lot.

He went back to his favourite passtime. Shredding toast and pondering the ways in which he could possibly get Potter once and for all...

* * * *

Back across at Gryffindor, people were starting to leave and go about their daily business. Most, including Ginny, headed for the library. It was a Saturday, but homework was piling up, especially for the sixth and seventh years. Harry was stll eating his breakfast and perusing Ron's Daily Prophet. He looked thoughtful. Hermione was not alone in hoping he was having second thoughts about the way he had treated the Hufflepuff.

Suddenly he sat up.

Everybody left at the table waited for an epiphany.

"I think...." Harry said.

Everyone forgot to breathe.

"I'm really bored," he finished.

The collective sigh of un-surprise could've blown a house down.

"I need a challenge. I'm sick of sleeping with these insipid Manhattan debutantes....no wait, what I meant was I think I need a new interest in my life. I mean all I do is school, quidditch and sex. It's getting old."

Ron looked at him squint.

"What the hell, may I ask, is wrong with that lifestyle?" he said, gawking at Harry as if he had a flobberworm growing from his left ear.

"Absolutely nothing, Ron. You are dead right. Meh. What was I thinking?" Harry replied, looking shocked at his own idiocy.

Ron subsided. Hermione rolled her eyes. For a second there, it had looked like Harry might've grown up. It was probably too much to hope for, in any case.

Harry, finishing with his paper, stood up abruptly. "What's on the agenda for today, guys?"

"Ron and I are doing homework," Hermione interjected very quickly. Ron had that crestfallen and heartbroken expression usually reserved for someone who has just received news that their favourite dog has died unexpectedly whilst they were on holiday.

"What, am I not invited?" Harry pouted fretfully.

"Of course, Harry. It's just...well, you haven't actually studied in so long, I rather thought you'd forgotten how."

"Don't be dumb, 'Mione," Ron interjected. "He's just had so many girls offering to do it for him that he'd be an idiot to bother. I mean, I'd LOVE to have someone do that for me..." He trailed off hopefully.

Hermione ignored him. The crestfallen look made it's triumphant return.

"So DO you want to study wth us today, Harry?" Hermione asked.

"Nope. Not really," Harry replied with a saucy grin. "Just making sure you still love me."

"Uh, yeah," said Hermione faintly, going pink. Now it wasn't that she FANCIED Harry or anything stupid. He was just very, very pretty when he smiled like that. She WAS heterosexual, after all.

"So what'll you be up to, mate?" Ron asked, still hoping for an out. 'Say quidditch practice' his eyes pleaded Harry, 'and give me something besides study to do!'

"Erm, I think I'll go and visit with Hagrid. And then send Sirius and Remus a letter. I'll see you guys later," he said, grinning evilly at Ron, who frowned rather ferociously. His expression turned angelic as Hermione turned to him with a smile.

"Let's head to the library then, shall we?" she ordered. "I want to look up Shangdo roots for Herbology, and you still have that Potions essay to start."

Ron muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like 'trucking oceans', and Harry smiled as he turned away. Ron was so hen-pecked, it was like looking at chicken feed with red hair.

He was still grinning and shaking his head when he looked up and met the eyes of a pretty blonde standing directly in his way. He gave her an apologetic smile and made to move past her, but she shifted until she blocked him again. He was not in the mood for flirting. I mean, he was only just finished breakfast. He might get heartburn. But, as a sex god, he had obligations.

His smile turned swanky and seductive. "Hiya Jen," he said to her cleavage as he looked her up and down unsubtly.

"Hello," she replied, matching his grin with one of her own. "Haven't spoken to you in a while, Harry. How've you been?"

"Oh, you know. I get there. You?" he replied.

"Never better."

"Got any interesting plans for today?" he asked idly, with a knowing smirk that made her eyes darken with interesting possibilities.

"Not really."

"Care to take a walk?" Harry asked, refraining from looking at his watch by sheer force of will.

"Love to."

Hm. Short sentences were all very well, but she seemed to be incapable of stringing more than two words together. Then again, Jennifer Mews was never going to win Jeopardy. She was one of Harry's more regular 'acquaintances'. He didn't 'acquaint' with her for her brains.

Holding out his muscular arm in a courtly fashion, Harry smiled as she took it possessively. Continuing on their way out to the lake, one of Harry's favoured snogging spots, he was somewhat surprised to hear her come out with a complete sentence.

"It's so cool the way you never let yourself get tied down, Harry," she cooed in what he supposed she thought was a seductive manner.

"That's me," he replied carefully, turning to her, "free and easy."

His devastating smile was ruined though, when he found himself rudely shoved from the other side. His escort was unimpressed to be suddenly released, and fell down rather clumsily. She sprawled on the floor in a most unladylike manner.

"Well, certainly EASY in all senses of the word," came a drawling, sarcastic voice. Harry knew without looking who it belonged to.

"I see you still haven't managed to sort out the whole walking-without-bumping-into-innocent-bystanders thing yet Malfoy. Well, never mind. Keep at it, you'll get there one day," Harry said blandly, as he righted himself and helped a spitting Jen to her feet.

Draco looked Jen up and down. "ANOTHER one, Potter? Two in the space of twelve hours...You'd better be careful. I hear it's possible to shag yourself to death."

"Well, you'll never find out, will you? Last I heard, you were coming EIGHTH on the Slytherin sex tally. Must be devastating. There's only about ten boys IN Slytherin," Harry said with a smile.

"And you'd know, having had half of them!" Malfoy spat. It was a well known fact that Harry swung both ways. "And I heard you were the outright winner of the Gryffindor 'most likely to have Gonorrhoea' poll. Congratulations, you must be very proud." Malfoy's smirk put Harry's to shame.

"Unlikely. I'm actually very selective about who I sleep with, unlike you who take whichever pureblood slut you can get," Harry replied, with a wink in Jen's direction. She preened at the implied compliment.

Malfoy watched this byplay with distaste. "Can't do without it, can you Potter," he sneered, lip curling with disgust.

"Not really, no. But then, I've never had to, unlike you." Harry laughed, and taking Jen's hand, turned to head out the front doors.

"I bet you couldn't either," Draco said musingly to his back. "You wouldn't be up to the challenge."

At that, Harry paused. His brow furrowed. A challenge, eh? Hm.

He turned back to the smirking blonde, eyebrows raised.

"You reckon?" he asked, tilting his chin up inquisitively and looking at Draco down his nose. He knew Draco hated it. Malfoy had never quite gotten over the fact that Harry had grown three centimetres taller than him the previous year. It made him feel very inadequate. And small also.

"Yeah, I reckon," Malfoy replied through gritted teeth.

"Would you care to make a wager on that?" Harry invited flatly, giving Draco a once over and, to his irritation, liking what he saw.

Draco flushed a little. "Sure, what's a little pocket change for the entertainment of watching the famous Harry Potter try to keep it in his pants. Say a thousand galleons?"

Harry smiled.

Jen looked between the two boys dumbly, not understanding the subtleties of the conversation but seeing her chances of a quick and entirely ecstatic shag with the famous and exceptionally talented Harry Potter behind the boatshed heading south for the winter.

"Come now Harry," she giggled. "You don't really want to do anything like that! I mean, think of all the fun you'd be missing..." Jen let her voice trail off suggestively and left a sexy pout on her lips.

Harry gave her a thoughtful glance. She did have a point.

Draco rolled his eyes. "Should've known. You really are quite the slut, Potter. Keep this up and there'll be nary a girl, or boy, in Hogwarts you haven't had. You don't have the guts to go without."

"Did you just say nary?" Harry asked in confusion.

"Yes. Let's not make a big deal of it. My point, in case you missed it because of the nary comment, was that you are too much of a coward to take up a challenge like this Potter."

Gryffindor stupidity reared its ugly head. Without thinking, Harry said hotly, "I'm no coward Malfoy and you know it."

Draco's eyes gleamed. Jeez, it was so EASY when they were proud AND stupid. "Prove it," he challenged. "No sex for a whole month. That's thirty days, Potter. Thirty days and thirty LONG nights. No kissing, no licking, no fondling, no sucking, no biting, no touching of any kind, and definitely no shagging. What do you think?"

Harry smirked. Malfoy had definitely thought about this.

"Oh, and Potter...No wanking either."

Harry went puce. What the hell was he going to do with himself, not being able to do anything with himself? Gods, he was in trouble and he knew it. Still, the Gryffin in him made him hold out his hand. Draco took it without hesitation.

"Thirty days," Harry said bravely.

"And thirty nights." Draco laughed, squeezing Harry's hand viciously, and then turning to stalk off down the corridor. He was only missing the evil mwahaha to make his exit complete....wait, no, there it was, echoing from down the corridor. Exit complete.

Harry turned to Jen, whose face was scrunched up like she was about to cry.

"Rain check?" he asked, running a finger down her cheek. Seemed that this whole two word sentence thing was catching.

"Guess so," she replied morosely, and she too turned and walked away.

Harry was left alone in the corridor, wondering what the bloody hell he'd gotten himself into.


	2. Chapter 2

And so it begins...

"Pssst! Seamus!"

Mouth open and just about to utter the password to the Fat Lady, who's eyebrows were raised disapprovingly at the smell of mead on his breath, Seamus Finnigan's head swung around comically.

"Whosat?" he said, only a very little slur in his voice.

He found himself pulled roughly into a conveniently located storage cupboard.

"Lumos," said the voice, and Seamus was rather surprised to find himself quite within shagging distance of Draco Malfoy.

"Whataya want, Malfoy?" he asked, too incredulous to come up with a scathing comment.

"Got a favour to ask you, Finnigan," Draco said with a smirk that could've legitimately been interpreted as a leer if you were a slightly inebriated, ravingly homosexual Irish boy locked in a broom closet with him.

Seamus looked thoroughly overexcited for a moment.

Draco backed hurriedly away. "Not that kind of favour!"

Seamus subsided. "Oh," he said disappointedly. "Well...?"

"I hear you are the man to speak to in this place for all things gambling related. I'm going to be taking bets on a rather...er, unprecedented event, and I need a good bookie with an effective system to do so. I was hoping you might help me," Draco said, in a tone of voice that clearly implied that dissent was not actually an option.

Seamus' eyes lit up for a second at the prospect of a good money-making opportunity. Then he quickly slipped on his poker face.

 

"And what makes you think I'd help a prat like you, Malfoy?" It wasn't convincing.

Draco smirked. "I wonder if Dumbledore's rather strict ten-week detention policy on student gambling still applies these days," he said conversationally. "I mean, say if I were to tell him that a certain Gryffindor prefect is down at Hogsmeade every weekend laying rather large bets on the ponies with Madame Rosmerta?"

Seamus looked boot-faced.

"Now, don't be bolshy, Finnigan," Draco warned. "I'll not take no for an answer, so be a love and say yes, will you?"

Seamus nodded reluctantly. "And what'll it be, this...event?" he asked, voice belligerent.

Draco smiled slyly. "Ah, I'm just coming to that..."

* * * *

Harry wandered aimlessly. He was quite good at it, actually. He saw his reflection in the window every time he passed it and it was extraordinarily satisfactory every single time. He supposed that at least he looked good, even if it was wasted on the windows of the entrance hall.

He was still thinking about the scene that had transpired earlier with Malfoy. Well, he wasn't actually thinking so much as smouldering. Really, homicidal tendencies made one assume such a sexy expression.

Bloody git Malfoy, manipulating me like that, Harry thought furiously. He wasn't sure whether he was angry or impressed. A bit of both, he admitted to himself. He had to admire how cleverly Malfoy had backed him into a corner. Quiet you, he said to the small voice in his right ear that said he'd much rather it had been a wall he was backed into, and Malfoy's body rather than his words that had pushed him there.

It was an internal battle that he fought daily. Hourly even. Well, it was sort of pretty much every time Harry saw Malfoy. And quite a surprisingly large amount of the time he didn't see him. Harry was winning the fight so far, but it was so very difficult when his nemesis was so adorable and blonde and smug.

Harry shook his head to clear very raunchy images of a vindictive Draco Malfoy from his head. It was distressing, really, how even when he wasn't thinking about anything particularly related to Malfoy, raunchy images of Malfoy would still lapdance through his mind. Yes, very disturbing indeed.

So what now? Harry asked himself. No sex. It really shouldn't be that hard, right? I mean, I went right up 'till fifth year without it. Surely I can survive a month? Harry was upset by how very un-convinced he was, even in his subconscious.

He stopped wandering aimlessly, and started wandering purposefully toward Gryffindor tower. He would sit in his dorm and determine a Plan. All he needed was something good to take his mind off sex for the next month. A Project even. It had been quite a long time since Harry had thought with his head and not his...er, other brain. He hoped the one between his ears still worked satisfactorily.

* * * *

"Right, quiet down you lot!" Seamus' Irish brogue broadened as he raised his voice above the muted roar that was a whole lot of Hogwarts students speculating loudly.

The Slytherin common room fell more or less silent. It was filled to absolute capacity with students of all houses, all of whom wore identical curious expressions. When Seamus and Draco had entered the packed library fifteen minutes ago, talking animatedly, and said they had an announcement to make regarding Harry Potter and a way to make a lot of money, everyone had followed them here, no questions asked.

"Right then," Seamus said with a grin at Draco. "Who here likes money?"

The crowd smiled and nodded, a few voicing their opinions noisily.

"And who here has ever, even if just for a second, wished that The Boy Who Lived would suffer, just a little bit?"

Everyone looked around at everyone else, reluctant to answer either way. Then Whatsername from Hufflepuff, very tearstained and blotchy, spoke up: "Well, I don't know about you lot, but I bloody well would!"

This precipitated a storm of applause; boys that hated Harry for getting all the girls, even if they liked him as a person, girls that had been shagged and then forgotten, girls that had secret, agonising crushes that would never be requited (Ginny Weasley's red head was nodding emphatically), and girls that had been passed over on Harry Cassonova Potter's search for the perfect shag. They all suddenly looked bloodthirsty and excited. Seamus shook his head.

"Well, I'll pass you over to Mr Malfoy then, it's his plan."

Draco smiled elegantly.

"This morning Harry Potter did a very stupid thing," he said with a smirk. "He made a bet with a Malfoy. Malfoys do not EVER lose bets. Because Malfoys cheat and lie and swindle and do pretty much anything to ensure their success."

People looked confused.

Draco continued undeterred. "However, Malfoy's don't JUST win bets. The win them with a whole hell of a lot of style and even more torment and humiliation on behalf of the losing party."

Silence. People were starting to get the idea.

Draco went on, his silken voice turning very slow and emphatic. "I bet Harry Potter that he couldn't go without sex for an entire month."

Disbelieving silence. Then a hysterical roar from the crowd that was as far beyond laughter as death is beyond life.

"Bullshit!" Dean Thomas called out. "Harry Potter couldn't do without sex if he was stuck on a desert island with Voldemort!"

More laughter.

"With Dumbledore!" some wag in the corner amended loudly.

They were getting quite hysterical now.

"With Snape!"

The suggestions became more idiotic. Draco smiled indulgently and waited it out.

"With Draco-bloody-Malfoy!"

Draco's grin died. He scowled around the room trying to figure out who had said that. He was unsure why the comment had hurt. But that didn't stop the ache in the region his heart should have occupied.

Seamus was laughing with the rest of them, but seeing the murderous expression on Draco's face, decided to shut them up. "Shut it you guys!" he howled. "He's not finished!"

Draco waited for quiet. "Well, now that we've all got that out of our systems..." he drawled bitingly. "Perhaps we can get on with the business at hand."

"Finnigan and myself will be running a day-by-day betting system. Finnigan is in the process of enchanting this parchment," Draco pointed out a huge poster scroll pinned to an eisel in the corner of the room, "Into a binding gambling contract. Once you've put your name down on a particular day, it cannot be erased, nor can the money you pledge be revoked. The money will go into a cumulative pool that will be kept under strictest supervision. If more than one person bets on the day that Potter happens to fail in his resolution, the pool will be divided between them on a weighted average according to the size of their original bet."

Draco nodded at Seamus to take over.

Seamus grinned. "Bets can be placed by speaking your name to the parchment, and placing your money in a charmed box I'll fix up as soon as I can - anyone that thinks of stealing or trying to claim more money than they have actually put in will get a thorough spanking from me, so don't try it. The list of people's names, their bets and the total pool for each consecutive day will be sorted out this afternoon."

A hidden voice at the back of the room piped up, "It might be worth putting an anonymous function charm on the parchment so that people who want to remain nameless can still put money on. It can be enchanted such that their name is only revealed if they win the bet, I read about it in a book called 'Magical Contracts'."

Draco and Seamus looked at each other thoughtfully. That had possibilities. Draco smiled and said, "I like that. Perhaps you could outline the procedure to Finnigan at the conclusion of this meeting Miss...?"

"Weasley," Ginny said, striding forward. She gave a shocked Seamus a saucy wink.

Who'd've thought the little Weasley was a raving sadist, Draco thought in surprise. He recovered and went on swiftly: "Does anyone have any questions?"

"How will we know if Harry's broken his resolution or not?" asked Colin Creevy, hoping someone would volunteer him to stalk Harry with his camera and record all his activities over the coming weeks.

Draco looked superior. "I will be setting up an alarm system in the Great Hall, Library and all four common rooms that will blare out a notice the second Harry...er, deliberately liberates...um, any fluid or whatever..." Draco became flustered for a second, thinking about how Harry might look during that particular event, all flushed and naked and moaning...

OH GOD, Draco thought half-disgustedly. He was obviously not getting near-enough sex. Perhaps he could take advantage of Potter's absence from the dating-game to up his numbers. There were going to be a lot of lonely girls and boys out there with the sex god out of commission.

"And how will you know when that happens?" Creevy persisted, jolting Draco out of his thoughts.

Draco made a silent vow that he would simply stop thinking from this point onward. He was sure it was disturbing his metabolism.

He resumed his mask, and continued: "There is a potion I can develop called Veritactis. The second Harry consumes it, it acts like a tracking device that tells you what he's doing at any particular moment in time. It is a complex potion that requires enchantment as well as ingredient mixing, but basically, the active ingredient is powdered root of Oxalis Canthium in conjunction with a relatively common enchantment used on the..." he paused mockingly "Er, infamous... "Marauder's Map" or most family 'Whereabouts Clocks' - I'm sure you're all familiar with them."

People nodded.

"So leave it to me. I assure you, if Potter even THINKS about getting his rocks off, EVERYONE will know about it."

Everyone smirked.

"Anything else?" Draco asked.

No-one spoke. They were too busy formulating Really Sodding Evil Plans.

"Then I have only a couple more things to add. Firstly, it is preferable if Potter does NOT find out about this." Draco shot a warning look at Pansy Parkinson and Lavender Brown in their respective corners of the room. Bloody Gossips. "Can't have him chucking a hissy fit and refusing to play."

Everyone nodded in agreement.

"Secondly, everyone who is NOT Potter should be told immediately. The more people we've got in this thing, the higher the pot and the more energetic young minds and bodies there are working on ways to torture Potter into giving up..."

Pansy looked deeply excited at the prospect of a good information drop. Draco rolled his eyes at her.

"And finally," he drawled languidly, "Any cheating, lying, torture and/or tactics of seduction that might cause Mr Potter to suffer and hopefully fail in his resolution are strongly...encouraged." Draco gave a chuckle that sounded quite a lot like an evil 'mwahaha'. It was fast becoming a trademark.

Everyone joined his laughter.

This was going to be fun.

* * * *

Harry found it quite difficult to maintain his patented swagger whilst clambering up steps, but somehow he managed it. Arriving at the portrait hole, he gave the Fat Lady a smile and a wink that sent her into a swoon and forced her to swing away from the wall involuntarily. Harry didn't even bother with a password anymore.

He entered the common room and was stopped short by the sight of Ron rolling around on the floor and Hermione sitting in an armchair, watching him with a superior, indulgent expression. Harry was surprised to find the room utterly deserted save for his two best friends.

Thinking he'd accidentally strayed into a bizarre and kinky domination-slash-courtship ritual, Harry started to skirt the room in the direction of the stairs to the dormitories. He was stopped when his ears started working, and he realised that Ron was laughing his skinny arse off. Harry had always secretly prided himself on the curves of his own backside, and so looked upon anything less perfect with superiority.

Harry watched Ron for a second, faintly amused.

He then turned to Hermione with a slightly raised eyebrow. It was one of his better expressions.

"We decided the library was too busy, and came here instead. Pansy came roaring up, just dying to tell us the latest. Draco, er...enlightened her about this morning," she explained, keeping an eye on Ron to make sure he wasn't dying of asphyxiation.

"It wasn't supposed to become common knowledge," Harry said huffily.

Hermione gave him a wink. "So, naturally, the whole school knows about it."

Harry blinked. And then remained silent as Ron gradually retained the ability to inhale. Every few seconds, he would lapse back into hysterical giggles and generally look like an idiot. Hermione's indulgent expression became strained.

Breathing heavily, Ron turned his eyes to Harry. This alone precipitated such a fit of laughing that Harry thought Ron might actually swallow his tongue. So much for a bloody supportive best mate, he thought savagely, and with a mighty mental pout.

"Ron Weasley, if you don't stop that this second, there'll be no sex for you for thirty days either!" Hermione finally burst out.

Ron shut up.

Harry looked incredulously at the pair of them. "You guys are actually having SEX?" he asked in shock.

Ron did a very fine impression of a fire engine. Hermione scowled.

"You may be reigning sex god, Harry Potter, but that does NOT mean you are the only one around here that is getting any!"

Harry mouthed like a goldfish. It was not a good look.

"And furthermore, Ron is an excellent shag!"

"Okay, ew," Harry said. "Besides, I knew that..."

Hermione goggled. "You mean you two have...?" She looked sly, suddenly, and Harry was distressed by the mental pictures she was probably conjuring in that fertile imagination of hers.

"And once more...ew. No, you silly bint, we haven't. Hannah Abbott told me."

Hermione turned on Ron with fury. "Ron Weasley, you told me that it was your first time as well!"

Ron was more purple than red now. He swung round and glared at Harry. "Bloody hell you poncy git, that was supposed to be a secret!"

"Oh. Bollocks," Harry said unrepentently, and grinned at Hermione. "Besides, I thought women liked a man with experience...or rather experiences...?" He shot an evil grin at Ron. That was for the poncy git comment.

Hermione lost whatever hold she had previously had on her temper, and exploded> "Experiences... as in plural?!"

Harry shut his mouth and looked longingly toward the dorms. Perhaps if he made a run for it...

Hermione and Ron proceeded to have a very long and drawn out argument about the merits of lying to protect the feelings of the love of one's life versus absolute honesty and trust being the basis of every good relationship. It ended poorly. Hermione stormed out in the direction of her dormitory.

Harry had long since taken a seat by the merrily crackling fire. Ron came to sit beside him sulkily.

"Could've kept your mouth shut," he muttered accusingly. He then said something that sounded rather a lot like 'cupid chucking custard'.

"Can't be the only one around here who has to be asexual for the next month," Harry said with a sidewise grin. "Figure it'll take her at least that long to forgive you."

Ron huffed and tried to give Harry the silent treatment.

Thirty seconds later: "D'you really think you can manage it?" Ron asked, curiosity winning over sulk in a rather one-sided battle.

"To see the look on Draco Malfoy's face when he is forced to hand over a thousand Galleons?" Harry asked unneccessarily.

"A thousand...?" Ron asked incredulously. "A thousand frigging Galleons! That's what the bet was??"

"Yep. But its more than that. It's about proving that I can actually do something that I set my mind to, you know? Proving that I am up to a challenge, that I am strong enough to control my body and mind, and that I am actually a worthwhile human being..." Harry was becoming tearful and dramatic.

Ron raised his eyebrows.

"Erm, sorry. Carried away with the moment."

"Drama queen," Ron said, without rancour.

They were silent for a moment. Ron started to laugh under his breath.

Harry frowned at him. "What?" he asked belligerently.

"Well, it's just that a world in which you don't have sex is like a world where...I dunno, a world where you and Voldemort sip Margueritas together in Tahiti and talk about who you'd like to shag more, Fleur Delacour or Lucius Malfoy, and Dumbledore is regularly having it off with both Professor Snape AND MacGonagall, and we play quidditch with a Yorkshire Terrier instead of a quaffle!"

"I wouldn't go that far," Harry said with a chuckle. He suddenly turned serious. "You really don't think I can do it?"

"It's not that," Ron said, very quickly indeed. "It's just, well, why would you want to? You have to be the luckiest sod on earth, able to have any girl you want, as often as you want. Why would you give that up?"

"You don't think I can do it, do you!?" Harry said resentfully.

"No, not really," Ron said, laughing.

"Shit. You're bloody right! What the fuck am I going to do?" Harry moaned, flopping down to sprawl elegantly next to the fire, one arm flung across his eyes dramatically.

"Dunno, mate," Ron replied helpfully. "Do know one thing though."

"Whassat?" Harry asked incuriously.

"It's going to be a very LONG HARD month for you!" He corpsed with laughter as if this was the funniest thing anybody ever said. 

Harry groaned morosely.

It seemed that pseudo-suggestive sexual connotations were making a comeback.


	3. Chapter 3

Harry awoke on Sunday with a feeling of dread. Or possibly he needed to pee really, really badly.

He groped absently for whomever it was beside him - he wasn't really sure - and then, upon feeling nothing, bolted upright. He looked around madly. There really was no-one with him. He was alone. Mark the day down ladies and gentlemen: Harry Potter had woken up alone.

"They LEFT me?" Harry asked the room at large incredulously, with a fluttering gesture of complete incomprehension. "Someone LEFT me? No-one LEAVES Harry Potter!"

Then he came fully awake. And groaned.

Pillock, he thought at himself. Of course there's no-one in your bed this morning. There was no-one here last night, you great, raving, idiotic-bet-making prat. It took quite some time for Harry to come to terms with this particular situation. It was extremely unusual.

Harry swooned back against the pillows. What a bollocky way to start the day. He arose grumpily and made his way across the room to his mirror, as was his custom.

He stopped still in absolute shock. He looked awful! His green eyes were dull; his hair was tangled and tousled in a way that not even his mother could have called attractive; his cheek was marked with pillow-creases; and it was possible, for the first time in his life, that Harry Potter had a spot coming up on his chin.

"Meep..." Harry whimpered, looking from feature to feature in astonishment and terror. He grabbed his wand from his bedside table. It was going to take a lot of work to pull off a good look today.

* * * *

Ginny looked around nervously before pulling an anonymous vial from her pocket and emptying it into the glass of orange juice before her. Draco had promised that this potion would be tasteless and undetectable, so it was just a matter of getting Harry to drink it without becoming suspicious. Ginny had been elected to administer the potion for the simple reason that she, in the agonising throes of her crush on Harry, was always doing stupid things like organising his breakfast for him. Pathetic though it was, it certainly came in handy for this somewhat bizarre situation.

When Harry wandered into breakfast, he caused quite a stir. Not least because he looked even more amazing than usual in a phenomenally attractive, extremely tight pair of stone-washed, boot cut, hipster jeans that moulded to him like a second skin and could only have come from France. The jeans were topped by a white singlet with the words 'available for sexport' emblazoned on the front in Gryffindor red, under open black robes that showed off every feature of his sensational body.

Harry smirked as he surveyed the room with an imperial mien. His eyes, for some inexplicable reason, immediately sought out and met Draco Malfoy's as the other boy sat, surrounded by simpering morons at the Slytherin table. Harry was gratified to see the heat in Malfoy's gaze.

The jeans were registered as Unforgivables with the Ministry.

Harry took his customary seat at his own table between Ginny and Hermione. 'Mione was very quiet and looked like she was about to explode over some thing or another. Ginny, on the other hand, looked almost nonchalant. Harry was miffed. Shouldn't she be having some kind of aneurism? Harry was wearing The Jeans, after all. Perhaps she's still half-asleep, Harry reassured himself. She'll start passing out soon, surely.

Sniffing haughtily, Harry got seriously stuck into his Vegemite soldiers. Looking around the table between mouthfuls, he found everyone staring at him with identical anticipatory grins.

Harry supposed it was The Jeans, and continued to eat at the same rapid pace. He had to hurry through breakfast today; he needed to get up to the library and find a quiet place to think. The Cunning Plan formation had not gone well yesterday. He had, somewhat unwisely, spent the evening's valuable planning hours imbibing vast quantities of Butterbooze� with Ron and staggering to bed wearing his socks on his hands and pretending he was a hippogriff. Ron had been in an even worse state - he was convinced that a broomstick was not a necessity for the act of flight and when Harry had left him, was standing precariously on the back of an armchair, flapping his arms and making statements such as: "Watch, Harry, and witness human evolution as I conquer the barrier of gravity."

This possibly explained Ron's absence from the breakfast table this morning.

Harry picked up his juice. Everyone held their breath, even the teachers sitting up at the Staff table who had, by now, come to hear of The Bet. Hermione was actually bouncing up and down on her seat trying to hold her tongue, and squeaked with every other bounce. Ginny shot her a warning look and remained silent.

Harry, oblivious, tossed back his laced juice with gusto. Tasting it, he frowned slightly. Okay, who pissed in the OJ? he thought to himself as he started forking up poached egg.

He didn't even remotely notice the storm of whispers that his actions precipitated, and continued to eat, deeply oblivious.

That was easy, thought Ginny in surprise. If only Hermione didn't look like she was about burst and involuntarily spill the whole story to Harry. Hermione had only found out this morning about the betting system, having been snogging Ron in a disused classroom when the whole library had been alerted to The Bet. She had looked Very Disapproving when Ginny told her.

This had not, of course, stopped her from placing a bet on day nine.

Over at the Slytherin table, as Draco watched Potter swallow his juice, a superior smile crept across his face. He stood up abruptly, needing to establish the tracking system activated by Harry's veritactis potion. He stalked out of the room.

He is overcome by desire for me, Harry thought serenely, watching him depart with a hooded gaze. Only natural, I suppose.

Having finished his breakfast, Harry stood abruptly. Smiling at Ginny, he said to a bouncing Hermione, "I'm just headed up to the library, 'Mione. Will I catch you there later?"

Hermione nodded, not trusting herself to open her mouth.

Ginny butted in, "Hermione and I will be up as soon as we've seen Ron. He passed out in 'Mione's bed last night after apparently swearing he had flown up the stairs. He was absolutely smashed. You know anything about that?"

"Nope," Harry lied with a suave grin, and waved at the two of them as he headed out of the Great Hall. He didn't hear the laughter that floated from the room as he sauntered up to the library.

"Books on Cunning Plans," Harry murmured to himself as he entered the musty room and looked around distastefully. "Would that be under B for books or P for plans?"

"Under D for Dickhead, I would have thought, Potter," came an amused drawl from behind him.

"Surely that would be where I'd find all of your more favoured books, Malfoy," Harry said snidely, glaring at his nemesis, who was seated at a table near the window, working on something that looked quite sinister. "Dark Magic and How To Avoid Hexing Your Own Cock Off, maybe, or: Death Eaters - Everything You Wished You Didn't Know About the Biggest Bunch of Wankers on Earth. Perhaps: Dark Wizards and Their Misbegotten Spawn of Evil, or what is most likely your personal favourite: Disgusting Rashes and How To Treat Them." Harry smirked.

Malfoy smouldered silently, and then stood up to leave.

Harry wandered over to Madame Pince. Giving her a devastating smile that made her go all aflutter and grin horribly in return, revealing yellowing teeth that would have made Mr Ed die of shame, Harry asked her, "I'm looking for books on the development of Cunning Plans. Perhaps you could be of service?"

At the word 'service', which Harry had thickened with a double helping of sexual innuendo, Madame Pince let out a girlish giggle and pointed to a row of books to her left. The shelf that held them had a sign: Books on Cunning Plans.

How convenient, Harry thought as he reached for the nearest book, which posessed the promising title: The Applied Textbook of Getting Yourself Out of the Shite. After ensuring that Malfoy was nowhere in sight, he began to read.

After only a few minutes a smile started to form on his face. In the chapter entitled 'When That Girl (Or Boy) Has You All In a Tither', he found a couple of rather interesting hexes that were designed to completely destroy all outward signs of arousal. Much better than thinking of dead kittens and potions essays, Harry thought.

 

The Flaccidus Hex, he read, is very useful in this sort of situation. Simply cast careful wards around the part of your anatomy that is causing you trouble, and then enunciate 'Flaccidium' whilst waving your wand with the aforementioned upright tweak and flick movement. Warning - use this hex with caution: it lasts several hours, so don't accidentally hit a limb!

Well that should take care of all outward signs of any problem, Harry thought smugly. Now, about this Cunning Plan for taking my mind off sex...Harry turned to the chapter entitled 'What To Do When You Don't Have Anything To Do' and started to read.

It looked like this book was going to become his new Bible.

"So," he said to himself. "All I need to do is talk to my teachers about extra credit work, take up a language class - Troll for Newbies should do it - start developing brand new Quidditch strategies and practice Yoga. This is going to be the easiest money I ever made," Harry announced to the empty library. He only just refrained from rubbing his hands together in glee. It was so pass�.

* * * *

Three days later, Harry was a shuddering wreck. It was utterly pathetic. He was permanently aroused, even WITH the Flaccidus hex.

Some Cunning Plan that turned out to be, Harry thought bitterly.

Hell, even when he was at the absolute peak of his sex-god activities he managed to go without sex for a few days occasionally. Why was it so damn hard, now?

Because people are leaving porn mags and extremely interestingly-shaped vibrators on my bed, he thought reasonably. Because I can't walk through a hall without at least three people groping me, and I think even Professor Sprout tried to feel me up during Herbology! If you ask me, her story about there being a deadly mosquito-like creature on my crotch was highly suspect.

Harry looked down morosely at his bed, where the latest issue of Wizarding S&M lay, strategically left open at the voluptuous blonde centrefold who was winking at Harry beguilingly. She was absolutely bollock-naked except for a school tie and spike heels, and was doing seriously wicked things to a broomstick.

Harry groaned and looked away. He raised his palms to the sky. "Why?" he asked dramatically. Why are they all against me?

Looking past the magazine, he spied a small piece of paper folded in half that said, 'Read me'.

Warily, Harry picked it up and opened it. It says, 'read me', doesn't it? Harry thought sensibly to himself. What else am I supposed to do with it?

"If you want a solution to all your problems, Harry Potter, meet me on the Quidditch pitch at precisely 5pm tonight," it read. "I really do want to help you."

He was not very bright, our Harry, and even though the innocent message would have screamed "Don't do it, you moron, it's a trap!" to anyone else, he decided, seeing as how it was conveniently 4:45pm, he would head straight there. After all, the note said it wanted to help him, not shag him. What harm could a little note do, huh?

* * * *

Famous last words, Harry thought redundantly, as he observed the knots that now bound his wrists and ankles to the left-most goal post at the changeroom end of the pitch. Completely unexpectedly, as soon as he had set foot on the grass he had found himself hit by a binding hex. He was now tied up, shirtless, and spreadeagled in a most unbecoming fashion.

It was all very unfair. Stupid note, Harry thought furiously, as if it were all the note's fault. If I could catch that little sod, I'd make it pay!

Harry had been hanging here for a good half-hour, judging by the position of the sun, and still his attacker had not revealed him and/or herself - hence why Harry was reduced to blaming everything on the note. Probably Voldie back for another go, he thought miserably. Really, what a persistant sort of git he is. Never gives up. Like that fucking Duracell battery, only slightly less annoying.

Harry looked around him into the growing twilight. Bastard better hurry up, it'll be dark soon. I think I'd rather die against a crimson sunset, really. Very dramatic and symbolic and all that. Also, much better for my complexion than moonlight. White is so draining. He was growing bored, and, surprisingly, dwelling on his complexion was losing its appeal.

He was just bored enough to start chewing on the inside of his mouth for entertainment when he heard a commotion from behind him. He tried to turn around to face his attacker, but he couldn't see past the post he was tied to.

"Are you sure we should do this? I mean it's Harry! Sure he's a ponce and he's shagged every girl and boy we've ever had our eye on, but does he really deserve this?" came a voice.

It sounded suspiciously like Seamus.

"For a combined pool of seven hundred galleons?" came the reply.

That sounded quite a lot like Dean Thomas.

How odd, thought Harry. Perhaps in some nefarious scheme, Voldie has bewitched my friends with the promise of untold riches for doing his evil bidding. Silly prat, he thought with confidence. Should know that none of my friends would ever betray me like that. After all, everybody loves Harry.

"I suppose. Shall we call them then?" said the voice-that-sounded-like-Seamus.

There was no reply but a single, piercing whistle. More rustling, and then something that sounded like a couple of women singing. Then came the sound of two boys running for their lives.

Oh crap, Harry thought. Death Eaters. Girly ones that sing. Could my day get any worse?

The singing was getting closer. It was quite nice, really. Some of these Death Eaters could get a job at the Three Broomsticks on Thursday nights, Harry thought, and giggled idiotically as he imagined Lucius Malfoy draped over a piano, doing a sexy jazz number dressed in stilettos and a red sequinned gown. Well, the big girly ponce did have all that hair, Harry justified, still giggling. Hysteria, he thought to himelf. Shut up, you git.

Whomever was singing was very near indeed. Harry started to feel very odd and tingly. What on Earth...?

Suddenly his vision was filled with flowing blonde hair and bewitching blue eyes, and there were hands sliding over his half-naked body, touching him everywhere. The whole touching bit did not, however, stop them from singing, and the enchanting melody was making his mind go numb and his body ache in all sorts of interesting places.

Veela, he thought in panic, as his body started to react to the mauling. Oh sodding crap!

The tingling numbness intensified, and against his will, Harry's mouth opened and he found himself saying, "Did you hear that I've just been appointed Headmaster at Hogwarts? They told me I'd have to give up professional Quidditch, mind, but how could they not want me really? After all, I have successfully tamed every single type of magical creature on earth, as well as a few from outer space. And I just managed to save every person in the world by inventing a cure for cancer. Of course, that was just in my spare time, by day I'm really an ambassador of peace to Wizarding nations worldwide..." 

The two Veela were laughing their arses off at this point, still seducing him with hands and voices. One of them slid her hand down to his trousers and started to undo his fly. Very Slowly. Oh, it was agonising alright. Absolutely sodding awful, Harry thought.

Harry found himself incapable of speech at this point, and stopped ringing his own bell. He drifted off in a peaceful sort of pleasure-filled dream where bets didn't exist and all that he needed to worry about was how to get his hands untied so he could start being of some use to the Veela that were trying to seduce him. After all, the opportunity for a menage a trois with two extremely sexy Veela didn't come along every day, not even for a Sex God like him.

Suddenly, the dream was shattered by the strange sound of loud voices and laughter coming from behind him. The Veela stopped touching him in panic, and Harry didn't know whether to be relieved or extremely Put Out. Sodding prick-teasers...

There came a loud noise that sounded suspiciously like several boys propositioning two very pretty Veela at once, and then there was a loud incantation that severed the bonds at his wrists and ankles, and he was free.

Harry stood shakily, breathing rapidly and looking extremely dishevelled with his shirt off, his pants undone and his hair looking a lot like two Veela had run their fingers through it repeatedly. Oddly enough.

Harry turned quickly away from where the Veela were now standing, grabbed his wand from where it lay on the ground, entangled in the sleeve of his stolen and discarded robes, and cast a hasty Flaccidus hex . Just in time too, for the two Veela suddenly turned away from, and insodoing revealed Harry to the crowd in front of them, who were clad in green and silver and carrying rather too many broomsticks for them to be normal students out for a walk.

Harry groaned. Oh bollocks, he thought miserably. Of course it would be the Slytherin team coming down to practice. Who better to witness my supreme humiliation? They probably set it up! Smarmy green pricks...

Harry raised his eyes and found himself looking at Draco Malfoy, who was smirking at him and holding his wand in his left hand. Obviously it was he who had released Harry from his bonds. But why? Harry thought. Surely he would want me to lose the bet, right?

Draco looked Harry up and down. Harry supposed it was fair enough. After all, you didn't see a view like this every day.

"Whassamatter, Potter?" Draco said, amused and aroused in equal measure. "Can't handle two half-bred Veela? Bit pathetic, that is."

Harry growled. "I was tied up you stupid prat!" he spat at Draco. "Of course I couldn't handle them!"

"You're obviously forgetting that you aren't allowed to handle much of anything for the next month, Potter," Draco said, enjoying himself immensely. He did, however, wish that Harry would put his clothes back on. It was dulling Draco's normally sharp wit quite significantly.

"Why did you set me free?" Harry asked in confusion. "Surely it would have benefitted your ends to have let them just take me?"

This was tricky, Draco thought. Draco didn't want Harry losing the bet today, because Draco had an enormous bet on for day twenty-nine. With the amount of money likely to be in the pool at that stage of the game, Draco stood to lose a whole hell of a lot of extra profit if Harry shot his load too early. But how to explain without arousing Harry's suspicion of the betting system he was NOT supposed to find out about?

Draco thought, and then sneered. "You don't technically lose if you don't cause the act in which you come, Potter. Whomever set this up should have known that. The truth is, Potter, that I don't want you finding any accidental release and getting away with it."

His voice became slower and more vindictive. "I want you to suffer. And to suffer, and suffer, until you can't take it anymore and you run hysterically around the school screaming 'Somebody FUCK me PLEASE!' at the top of your lungs, and insodoing show everyone what a shallow, pathetic little sex-obsessed fuckwit you are."

"I'd say pathetic is a tad extreme," Harry said numbly, watching the sudden vicious triumph suffuse Draco's face. Comprehension was finally dawning as to what he had actually taken on in making this bet. Draco didn't care about Harry having sex or not having sex. It wasn't about that at all. Draco wanted Harry to suffer and possibly to die of mortification. Draco wanted Harry to know what it felt like to be hated and despised and NOT WANTED. This was about humiliation, not about sex. And Harry was suddenly terrified.

Harry wavered. He wanted to leave, and yet he couldn't quite tear himself away from the cruel, crystalline beauty of his nemesis. Draco looked exceedingly hot in his Quidditch robes. It was quite difficult to determine whether this pissed Harry off more than it impressed him.

Draco smiled maliciously. "Alright there, Potter?" he asked. "Looks as though you can't seem to decide whether you're coming or going."

Harry remained sulkily silent.

"So which is it, Potter?" Draco asked. "We're going to practice; if you stick around you might pick up a few tips on how to actually play Quidditch. After all, 'letting Harry catch the Snitch' is getting a little old for a strategic tactic, don't you think?"

Harry glared at him, and stood straighter. "It's proved quite effective thus far though, wouldn't you say? The day the Gryffindor team needs tips from Slytherin is the day that I steal McGonagall's tartan hat and wear it and nothing else whilst running around the Quidditch pitch screaming 'Malfoy is my God'. Which, incidentally, is probably the same day that Satan gives everyone in hell a day off to have a snowball fight. It's been an absolute pleasure as always, Malfoy; I'll hopefully not see you later."

"I'd say the pleasure was all mine, Potter, but that'd be a lie. It looks like quite a lot of it was yours." Draco looked at the front of Harry's trousers and smirked. The flaccidus hex was, unfortunately, not infallible.

Harry drew himself up with dignity. "If you've finished ogling me, Malfoy..."

Draco sputtered. "I- ...was NOT - I would...NEVER...ogling my arse -..."

Harry smirked at his discomfiture and turned away, bending over Very Slowly to retrieve his clothes. He straightened up, and over his shoulder said, "It's probably quite hard to ogle one's own arse, but feel free to use mine as a substitute, Malfoy. It's much prettier anyway."

The smile remained on his face as he walked away.

Draco reluctantly found himself taking Harry up on his offer. It was a very nice arse.

* * * *

When Harry arrived at Gryffindor tower, he paused just inside the portrait door and listened with great interest to snatches of the conversation that was going on between Seamus and Dean in one corner of the common room.

"...D'you suppose they've...yet?"

"Dunno.....surely the bell....gone off if anything...happened..."

Well they didn't sound like recent additions to the Voldemort's Minions Association. But you could never be sure, Harry supposed.

"Yeah, spose you're right. What'll we do if Harry...."

Aha, Harry thought. The other shoe.

"Well, he can't kill us, right?"

Kill them, eh? Harry thought, intrigued. Kill them for what? Perhaps I should ask them, but it'll have to be in a really cunning way so they don't guess that I've been listening to their conversation...

"Kill you for what?" Harry asked, with what he thought was upmost stealth and nonchalance.

"Harry!" Dean exclaimed, eyes widening comically in surprise.

"For...um...borrowing your Firebolt without asking," Seamus squeaked, horrified - Harry had resisted the Veela?! Was he a man or machine?! There goes my three-hundred-and-fifty galleons, he thought, sharing a dejected look with Dean. Looking back at Harry, Seamus suddenly forgot his sulk and became extremely interested, because Harry had neglected both to do up his jeans, and to put his shirt back on, and Seamus was, well, Seamus.

"Did you hurt it in any way?" Harry asked, narrowing his eyes at the suddenly drooling Irish boy. Well, at least they weren't Death Eaters. Still, if they had damaged his baby...he might just make them wish for the first part of that title anyway. Hehe, Harry congratulated himself. That was really clever...

"Nope, still in pristine condition Harry. It was urgent, I swear!" Seamus said earnestly, not removing his eyes from Harry's abdomen, and distracting Harry from his inner self-congratulatory monologue. Dean was nodding his head emphatically.

Harry smirked. "God dammit Seamus, will you look at me when I'm talking to you?"

Dean sniggered quietly.

Seamus' eyes didn't move. "I am looking at you Harry," he said, brogue thickening. "And a very nice view it is too."

"Oh, bloody Nora," Harry drawled. "Won't get a straight answer out of the poor boy now. I'm going to have a shower and get changed."

"Need a hand scrubbing your...er, back, Harry?" Seamus asked eagerly.

Harry pretended to deliberate. "No," he said finally, and watched a disappointed look kill and destroy the hopeful expression Seamus' face. "But you can pick out my outfit for dinner, if you like," he added generously, forgetting the previous occasions on which he had bestowed this honour upon Seamus and lived to regret it. Seamus' face lit up.

"Right you are, Harry," he said, giving a snappy salute. "How do you feel about leather?"

"Um...leather?" Harry whimpered. Oh well, for the sake of keeping the peace with Seamus...

"Sure, Neville has a pair of leather trousers you can borrow. They'll look fabulous on that arse of yours," Seamus enthused, already on his way to the dorms. Dean was killing himself laughing in his armchair.

"Crap," Harry said to Dean with Feeling.

Dean nodded sympathetically. "Yep, I'd say so."

"Leather trousers?"

"At least they'll look better on you than on Neville," Dean said with a chuckle.

Harry was forced to agree.

* * * *

Dinner was an absolute debacle.

Harry's appearance in leather trousers caused a similar reaction among the students as the day that Professor Quirrel had run in shouting about a Troll in the dungeons. There was screaming and widespread gawking, girls passing out all over the place, mouths hanging open in shock and awe, and a puddle of drool forming on the floor that was possibly going to become some kind of a worksafe hazard.

Harry surveyed it all with a kingly smirk, and then meandered over to his table with upmost confidence, straining the gasp-tight trousers to breaking point as he sat down.

He started eating his mashies contentedly as Dumbledore's voice rang out: "Silence!"

The room fell reasonably quiet, save for the panting of everyone who had been screaming, and the clicking of mouths being suddenly closed.

"What is the meaning of this?" Dumbledore asked, a twinkle in his eyes. He had missed Harry's entrance, having been engaged in a thumb war with Professor Summs, but was surprised at the pandemonium that had suddenly overtaken the dining room.

Everyone was quiet for a moment.

"It's Harry, Sir. Harry Potter," a little voice piped up from the Ravenclaw table. "He's just walked in wearing...um, l-l-leather t-trousers."

"Ah," Dumbledore said wisely.

There was a pause.

"Carry on then," he said with a slight smile, knowing that when students want to have mass hysteria over Sex Gods, they must be allowed to do so without interruption, or serious injuries can result.

There was mayhem.

In the midst of all the neck craning and eye goggling that was going on, Draco Malfoy smirked. What a view, he thought, mind skimming over the memory of Potter's entire entrance with decided interest. And then shook himself thoroughly and repeatedly. Some joker (one of his less witty personalities, no doubt) started up a taunt in the back of his mind that went something along the very mature and intelligent lines of: Draco and Harry, sitting in a tree, f.u.c.k.i.n.g!

Aaaargh! Draco thought in panic, quickly shutting up that idiot with unveiled and particularly horrifying death threats. Really, schizophrenia certainly does have multiple downsides...

What is wrong with me? he wondered. He couldn't take his eyes off Harry. Or, more specifically, off Harry's arse. It was becoming stressful. He didn't know which he wanted to do more: kill him or shag him absolutely senseless.

Harry finished his dinner in record time. He was unbelievably uncomfortable and hot in these bloody leather pants, despite all the fuss they were causing, and the chafe was becoming completely unbearable. He turned to Ron, who was feeding Hermione bits of sausage off Harry's plate as she sat on his knee.

Ew, Harry thought. So many sexual connotations I find myself unmanned by the very idea of thinking up something clever to say.

"If you've finished stuffing my meat into your girlfriend's mouth," Harry finally said with a smirk, "We've a joint Herbology poster to finish off."

Ron started and blushed scarlet. Hermione stopped chewing the meat in her mouth with a sullen expression. "Meet you in the library in ten?" Ron said, his ears so red he could stand in a street and stop traffic.

"Sure," Harry said, and stood up abruptly. "Don't forget to swallow, Mione," he added with a sweet smile in her direction. He chuckled as she choked on the sausage and spat it all over the table. The Gryffindor table cracked up.

"Or, hell, just spit if it tastes that bad," Harry laughed, and turned to walk away. "I'm sure Ron isn't the type to get offended."

There was more chaos as the trousers were again revealed. Harry started sauntering slowly down the aisle between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor tables, making sure everyone got a good gawk in, only to have his progress suddenly halted by a bit of a roadblock.

It was Draco Malfoy and the entire Slytherin Quidditch team, obviously spoiling for a fight. Harry noticed with a smirk that Malfoy couldn't help himself from a quick glance at Harry's trousers. When Draco's gaze again met Harry's, the other boy had the grace to colour a little. Harry gave him a barely perceptible wink, and then surveyed the Slytherins with complete non-concern.

"Oh help," he said, affecting a morose tone of voice. "Big, Scary Slytherins wanting my...blood. Hang on a second, I think I might have to sit down, my knees are giving way with fright." Harry's face was deadpan, his voice as flat as a tack and with a sharp, hard drawl that made the Slytherins look at each other with something akin to nervousness.

Harry noted without surprise that his own Quidditch team had come to stand behind him for moral support. How Gryffindors love a good fight.

"Nice trousers, Potter," Blaise Zabini smirked from Draco's left, disdain dripping from his voice.

"Thanks, Zabini," Harry said blithely. "You want to borrow them sometime? With their help, you might actually lose that V of yours someday."

Blaize glowered. "Like I'd really want to get into your trousers, Potter," he spat.

"You'd be the only one that doesn't," Harry smirked, with a sideways glance at Draco.

"Ah yes, our resident Sex God rears his ugly head. Tell me, Potter, how are things in that department? Managing to keep your hands to yourself? Or are you finding yourself a little tied up in...er, knots?" Draco drawled, amused.

Harry flushed, thinking again about the Veela incident. He wondered idly how many people knew about it. "I'm utterly blooming, thanks for asking," Harry said, determinedly ignoring the sexy smirk on Malfoy's face. "Never felt better."

"You're going to lose, Potter," Draco said quietly, suddenly serious. He was having a hard time talking and trying to refrain from looking at Harry's trousers. Multitasking is highly underrated, he thought.

"You've never beaten me in anything, Malfoy," Harry said with supreme confidence. "Can't see you starting now."

"Yeah? Well you won't be saying that when I catch the Snitch before you on Saturday, Potter," Draco said, tilting his chin up and cursing himself for sounding like a twelve year old.

"Don't be stupid, Malfoy. You couldn't beat me to the Snitch if I broke my broomstick and had to run around the pitch after it," Harry said with a scornful laugh.

Draco glared at him. "Don't be so sure, Potter." The tone of his voice was ominous.

Harry turned away. And then stopped. With a mischievous grin, he picked up a handful of mashed potato from a nearby plate and turned suddenly, lobbing it at Blaise Zabini. It hit the astounded Slytherin full in the face.

Harry took advantage of the shock factor to saunter out of the room, completely unconcerned.

"FOOD FIGHT!" someone at the Hufflepuff table shouted, and then there was food flying everywhere. Draco, to his immense annoyance, copped half a shepherd's pie to the shoulder, and turned in fury to find a grinning Ron looking angelic over at the Gryffindor table.

Draco used his wand to surreptitiously flick an arsenal of peas in the smarmy git's direction, and was gratified by the look of outrage on Ron's face as he found himself with peas stuck in all sorts of nasty places.

With a bellow of outrage, Ron started hurling everything within reach at the Slytherin table, not knowing or caring who was responsible for his sudden pea infestation, but rather enjoying the opportunity to throw food around like a ten-year old. One of his poorly aimed carrots hit a baby Ravenclaw, and then there was absolute bedlam as the Ravenclaws all weighed in and started throwing food and hexes around like confetti.

It was getting dangerous in here, Draco decided, and headed out of the great hall. In the ensuing melee, he was only stopped by one person.

It was Seamus Finnegan, with a gleam in his eye. "About that Snitch, Malfoy..." he said with a foxy grin.

"Care to put your money where your mouth is?"

Draco rolled his eyes and stalked away.


	4. Chapter 4

The rule of the one that got away

The rest of the week passed uneventfully. Harry, whilst missing sex with a desperation that approximated the feelings of farmers in the midst of a ten-year drought toward rain, found that liberal application of the Flaccidus hex and a lot of extracurricular homework kept the arousal at bay the majority of the time. Thus, when Saturday's Quidditch match rolled around, he felt nothing beyond his usual pre-match mixture of arrogance and determination.

Ten minutes before the game, Harry sat alone in the change rooms. The rest of his team had already left for the cage, with Ron, as keeper, giving them his usual pep-talk. As captain, this task should have fallen to Harry, but Harry found that his ability to speak about Quidditch was about as uplifting as a five-year-old jockstrap, and thus had wisely chosen to delegate.

Hermione, still slightly sulky with Harry over humiliating her about her sausage penchant, had mended the holes in the knees of his Quidditch cords, Harry noted as he pulled them on and sat to do his kneepads up.

He found himself thinking about Malfoy. Again. Harry could no longer fool himself that he was just reviewing Draco's flying style so he would be full bottle for the match. He was admiring it. The other boy flew with a grace and precision that was at once taunting and electrifying. On the rare occasions that Harry was still long enough to observe Draco in flight, he found himself spellbound by the sheer, abandoned beauty of it - there was a passion that bordered on wantonness in Draco's flying, in the elegant lines of his hard body as he moved atop his broom; in the fire that exploded in his eyes when things didn't, or did, go his way; in the cruelty and sheer desperation that infused him when he was out on the pitch. He flew like nothing else existed when he was in the air. It was why Harry loved to fly against him, not that Harry would ever tell Draco that. It was this passion that Harry suddenly longed to experience for himself...

It was stupid, really, how a little thing like enforced celibacy could make you desperate to shag your worst enemy.

Harry found he wasn't looking forward to playing against the Slytherins at all. Usually he relished the harsh, violent physical contact of Quidditch, but with his sudden sexual awareness of Draco Malfoy, Harry wondered if he wasn't just as likely to be turned on by it instead. The thought was a little unnerving.

Oh well, better just catch the Snitch in the first five minutes, and then I'll have no time to worry about it, Harry thought with a confidence that wasn't all feigned.

He stood up, fastened his robes, grabbed his broom and headed to the cage. He arrived just in time to catch Ron saying, "Now let's go wipe the grass with those Slytherin pussies!"

What was it with Ron and sexual connotations?

* * * *

Ten minutes into the match, Harry knew he was in trouble.

Slytherin was up fifty to ten, the Snitch was nowhere to be seen, and Draco Malfoy had just groped him for the fourth time in as many minutes. It was getting harder and harder to ignore. Harder and harder and harder and HARDER...shut UP idiot brain, Harry shouted to himself. Really, the gimp in his mind was becoming an irritation.

Harry swooped and dove, not seeing the Snitch but attempting to keep Malfoy's hands away from his person. He looked over his shoulder and was transfixed by the flight of the other boy. Malfoy really flew...it was quite beautiful. Harry, in a transport of pleasure, flew exceedingly low, and looked around just in time to realise there was no way in hell he was going to be able to avoid planting his face in the dirt. He took an inelegant, sprawling tumble from his broom onto the pitch, landing on his back, and stared up at the blue sky with astonishment. How had that happened?

"And Harry Potter shows us how well he can fly without a broomstick..." came the commentator's voice. "Perhaps all this bet malarkey has made him a little hesitant to hang on to his stick..." There was a ripple of laughter from the stands.

Harry sat up, groaning. "Motherfucker," he said succinctly. He retrieved his broom and kicked off from the ground more forcefully than was necessary. His face was as red as his uniform.

He dodged a bludger and shot up to the upper levels, coming face-to-face with Malfoy, who was laughing his handsome head off. "All right there, Potter?" he asked nastily. "Really elegant flying back there, I thought."

"Fuck you, Malfoy," Harry snarled, circling Draco and keeping his eyes peeled for the Snitch. He was buggered if, after that little performance, he was going to let Malfoy humiliate him any further by beating him to it.

Draco took advantage of Harry's inattention to glide right up to his side and run a hand slowly and seductively down his thigh, and doing an extremely good job of distracting Harry from his fierce, determined search. Harry, already strung up and strung out, nearly leaped off his broom.

"Get off me, Malfoy," Harry spat, giving the other boy a shove that nearly sent him off his broom.

"Afraid you're starting to enjoy it, Potter?" Malfoy laughed and shoved back, ending up practically sitting on Harry's broom whilst Harry hung precariously from the other side, trying furiously to right himself.

"This is pathetic, even for you," Harry said viciously, regaining his seat. "Trying to distract me with seduction. You've tried every single possible tactic to try and steal the Snitch from me, but nothing has ever worked. You can't beat me, Malfoy, so I don't know why you even bother trying."

Draco sneered. "You might be surprised," he said, spotting the Snitch over an unsuspecting Harry's shoulder, and making an inelegant dive for it. Harry immediately went after him, giving Draco's broom a vicious kick that made the Slytherin lose his momentum. Harry was dimly aware of the crowd roaring in the background, the wind streaming in his face; but it was the other boy breathing fiercely next to him that took up most of Harry's attention.

They followed the leaping, darting Snitch as one, practically glued together and flying with absolute speed and precision. Draco pushed Harry off line time and time again. Harry, however, gave as good as he got, at one point putting a knee under Draco's and lifting up suddenly, nearly tipping Draco off his broom. It was a filthy tactic worthy of a Slytherin, and for a moment Draco was almost impressed.

The Snitch went into a dive, and with a gut-swooping wrench the two Seekers went after it, diving toward the ground at alarming speed, each knowing they would not give way, each knowing that the other would rather die than pull out. Faster and faster they went, hurtling toward the ground like a green and red bullet, not so much flying as plummeting, at absolute terminal velocity. As they dove, Draco shoved Harry ferociously, but Harry remained unmoved, squinting in concentration. The Snitch was wavering, he was sure of it. Draco was so focussed on hitting Harry that he hadn't really been watching the golden ball. Harry knew, suddenly, that it was going to pull out, and pull out to the left.

Before the Snitch had even moved off course, Harry was pulling out of the dive pre-emptively, arcing off to the left in an agonising loop. The crowd gasped. Harry Potter, pulling out of a competitive dive? As far as anyone knew, it had never happened. Draco didn't move off course, following the Snitch to within feet of the grass, his face screwed up in concentration. And suddenly, just as Draco's grasping fingers touched the glittering golden wings, the Snitch took a sudden bound skyward, and right into Harry's waiting hand. It was absolutely brilliantly done.

Draco pulled out of the dive and up toward a grinning Harry, his eyes wide in disbelief. For a single moment of unguarded triumph, he had really believed that he had a chance of winning over Harry Potter. It had been beautiful. Damn you, reality, he thought morosely.

Harry smirked as Draco reached his level. "You were saying?" he inquired politely.

"That you were a prat, actually. And that the only reason you could catch the Snitch so consistently was because you and it share identical brain capacities," Draco spat, too downcast to even try for a witty rejoinder.

"Still hurts, does it Malfoy?" Harry asked in a voice dripping with false concern, as they began to drift back to the ground. "Even though I've beaten you every match since second year? Perhaps Quidditch simply isn't your game. Maybe Daddy should sponsor you in a new sport...water polo, perhaps, or ballet..."

"Like to see me in tights, wouldn't you Potter?" Draco spat. But there was laughter in his voice.

"Been there," Harry said, remembering a time in the previous year when Draco had been dared to dress for the day as Robin Hood and strut up and down the Slytherin breakfast table singing the Men in Tights theme song. "Wasn't pretty." Harry was a liar. For some reason, Draco Malfoy looked good in everything, even tights.

"Better than how you looked when the Veela...erm, attacked you," Draco smirked, also filling his bollocks quota for the day. "The terrified look on your face was the stuff of fantasy, Potter."

"You fantasise about me?" Harry said, his smirk rivalling Draco's. "Why Draco, you pervy sod. Here's me thinking you hated me..."

"I do hate you, Potter. I hate absolutely everything about you. You are a complete prick," Draco said with upmost conviction.

"And you are absolutely nothing, Malfoy. A total and utter non-entity. Not even a blip on the radar screen. You are a waste of perfectly good oxygen, and an ugly git to boot."

At this, Draco lost his temper, and suddenly got all up in Harry's face. "And who the fuck do you think you are, Potter, telling me I'm not worth anything? You who have everything and waste it all. If anyone is not worthy of their own fame and talent, it's you." 

Harry looked at Draco in surprise, finding him suddenly close enough to kiss. The other boy wore an expression of utter, utter hatred. There was no laughter in those dove-grey eyes now; they had hardened to ice over asphalt, hard and cold with white fire, completely frightening. But Harry didn't scare easily, and met the frigid stare with equanimity.

"I'm Harry-the-fucking-Sex-God-Potter. And that means I don't have to listen to your shit," Harry spat, stung by Draco's words.

Draco appeared to shake himself, and looked away briefly. When he met Harry's stare, the cool veneer was back over his hooded eyes. "By all means, Potter, ignore it while you can. But be careful who you push away. You might find that being a Sex God counts for nothing when no-one will even look at you."

"I'm terrified," Harry said flatly.

"And I'm suddenly very bored with this conversation," Draco drawled bitingly, turning away.

"Running off again, Malfoy?" Harry asked, admiring the back view suddenly presented to him. "Someone could be forgiven for thinking you yellow."

"I'm no coward, Potter," Draco spat.

"I know what you are," Harry said slowly.

Draco was quiet for a long time, unsure how to interpret that enigmatic statement. Then he tossed his head dismissively, smirked, and placed a hand deliberately on Harry's crotch. "And I know that you want it, Harry Potter."

Harry looked at Draco expressionlessly. "Perhaps you should've been a beater, Malfoy. If you were half as good at catching the Snitch as you are at hanging onto a bat, Slytherin'd be unbeatable.

Harry flew off, leaving Draco cursing the air blue.

* * * *

"I'm really not sure we should be doing this, 'Mione," Ron whined for the fifth time on Sunday morning.

"Don't be a prat, Ron,' Hermione said, rolling her eyes.

They were sitting in the Gryffindor common room, surrounded by prostrate, hung-over forms draped across armchairs and rugs in a most decorative fashion. The most riotous piss up had ensued from Harry's brilliant Snitch capture the previous afternoon; Ron had smuggled in a keg of Butterbooze� from the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes enterprise (with no teachers the wiser), and someone had got hold of a case of Firewhiskey. The Gryffindors had got absolutely rat-arse, shit-face plastered, and they had enjoyed every second. As such, no-one but Ron and Hermione were stirring, although it was well past lunchtime.

"I feel bad, ganging up against Harry like this. It just seems wrong, paying a girl to come here and shag him," Ron wailed. The subject of their discussion was still, as far as they knew, sleeping up in his dorm room. The Sex God always had been a lazy git.

"Well," Hermione said with a wicked grin. "Look at it this way. Harry will just be miserable all month if he doesn't get shagged early. We're doing him a favour.'

"What makes you so sure it'll work anyway? I mean, Cho Chang went through the entirety of her school years here without once getting together with Harry. I'd've thought that suggested that they weren't, you know, compatible...?"

"That's exactly why this will work," Hermione said as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. "Cho Chang is the One That Got Away." She said this with Great Significance. "There are rules about this sort of thing."

"Rules?" Ron asked quizzically.

"Cho is the One That Got Away, the unreciprocated crush, the one great unconsummated passion of Harry's life," Hermione said patiently, as if she were reading from a dictionary. "She's the one he couldn't have, a black mark on his perfect Sex God score sheet; she is an unattainable challenge, untouchable and remote." Hermione paused dramatically. "She is the one person that could make Harry give up this bet."

"Hm," Ron said, unconvinced.

"Look, Ron," Hermione said exasperatedly. "If we send Cho Chang up there in full-on seduction mode, there is NO WAY Harry will be able to resist shagging her. Alarm bells will go off, we'll end up with enough money to pay Cho off, settle Harry's bet with Malfoy and have a substantial amount to spare, and Harry gets to shag his one unrequited love. Everybody wins in this situation. Except possibly Malfoy."

Ron grinned worriedly. "But what if Harry's really serious about winning this bet, 'Mione? He could be really put out if we make him lose."

"Don't fret, love," Hermione said with a grin. "Harry'll thank us for this, once he comes round."

"Hrm," Ron said doubtfully. But then, Cho Chang walked in wearing nothing but a smile and a sexy, utterly miniscule schoolgirl outfit that made Hermione wonder why the girl had bothered getting dressed at all.

A bemused sort of smile formed on Ron's face.

"Perhaps you're right, 'Mione," he said abstractedly. "I think Harry will thank us for this."

"He's upstairs, Cho," Hermione said with a wink. "Go earn us all some money, would you?"

Cho grinned. "Sure thing, Herm. See you in an hour or so."

She tripped off up the stairs in her high heels, leaving Hermione and a dumbfounded Ron to share an anticipatory grin in her wake.

"What'd I tell you?" Hermione crowed.

Ron was practically in a salivating stupor, and she watched him indulgently.

Finally, he shook himself out of it. "Fancy a game of chess?"

* * * *

It was the sudden, sharp, aching pleasure that dragged Harry from deep sleep. It clawed at him, pulling him out of a bizarre and disturbing world in which bananas had legs and walked around foppishly slapping people across the face with white gloves, Veela chased him up and down the length of the Quidditch pitch in red sequinned gowns and high heels, singing all the while, and Draco Malfoy rode his broom around bare-arse naked wearing a tartan hat over his bits, shouting "I am GOD" and pelting Harry with bits of mashed potato.

"Mmnn..." Harry groaned, slitting his eyes in pleasure and letting himself slowly come awake, enjoying the sensations that were flooding through his body. Oh, surely nothing ever felt this good, he thought in rapture. So fucking good....

Suddenly, all in a rush, he realised where he was and what was happening, and sat up abruptly.

"What the sodding hell?" he howled, nearly dislodging Cho Chang from his lap where she was in the process of removing his pyjama bottoms with her teeth.

"Cho?" he asked incredulously. She desisted, and stood slowly, letting him have the benefit of her slender body and its non-existent covering. Harry's eyes inadvertently raked her from top to toe, taking in the skewed tie, indecently tight school blouse knotted above her midriff, under which her breasts strained in a visible black pushup bra; tiny little pleated skirt which barely covered her groin, knee-high socks and six inch closed-toe heels. Her gorgeous black hair was loose about her slender shoulders and her sly, Asiatic face was bathed in the glow of the most seductive smile Harry had ever seen.

"Oh. Holy hell," Harry murmured. "Hello, Jezebel."

Cho smirked. "Hello," she whispered seductively. "Have you missed me, Harry?" She started inching closer, trailing her fingertips from his left hand that was clenched convulsively about the bedclothes, up his muscular arm and across to his chest, where she drew a nail slowly across his nipple and made him groan with want.

"Nice to see you again, Cho," Harry whimpered, closing his eyes against the temptation as she began to crawl up his body, her cleavage foremost in his view, trailing hot, wet kisses in her wake.

"I know I haven't always been very nice to you, Harry," she whispered, taking his earlobe between her teeth and sliding her hips across his.

"No, you haven't," Harry gasped, hands fisting the bedclothes.

"I can be nice, Harry," she purred. "D'you want me to show you how nice I can be?"

"Yes, actually," Harry said a bit redundantly, as his hands came up to grasp her slender waist and then trailed slowly up her ribcage. His breathing was erratic and his eyes starting to go unfocussed as she started a slow assault on his neck, using her tongue with great skill.

Cho smiled triumphantly into the crook of his neck. "You never could resist me, Harry Potter. You always wanted me," she practically crowed. She loved her power games, this one. She had a prime spot in the line-up at Madame Dominatrix's Palace of Pain on weekends. Particularly skilled in the use of a horsewhip and fluffy pink handcuffs, I hear.

"Only because I couldn't have you," Harry replied, his hands stilling and his expression going suddenly chilly. "Because you never once gave me a chance."

He pushed Cho away from him and stood up, shuddering with unfulfilled arousal. He pinned Cho with a death glare. "So why don't you explain to me why in the bloody everlasting hell you're smarming all over me now?"

Cho looked sullen and bolshy. "I wanted to see you, Harry," she said. "I wanted to see how much you've improved."

"Liar," Harry smirked. "Spill, Cho."

Cho never could keep her mouth shut around a secret.

"The Bet," she said succinctly.

"Ah," Harry said bleakly. "It figures. You would never sleep with me unless you had some kind of monetary encouragement. If I didn't know exactly how hot and desirable I am, I'd probably be having some kind of self-esteem crisis right now. Fortunately my ego is large enough to withstand even you and all your bullshit."

Cho looked at him in disbelief. How he had changed from the child she had known at school. His arrogance was alarmingly attractive.

"How much did Draco Malfoy offer you?" Harry asked idly, wanting to kill his nemesis quite a lot at this point.

"I was offered a hundred galleons," she said sulkily, refusing to budge on the subject of her anonymous benefactors. She began to advance on him slowly, removing her tie and beginning to unbutton her shirt. "But I'm thinking I might just do it for free. You've changed, Harry. You have become so confident and sexy. I suddenly want you. Right now."

"Hum," Harry said with affected boredom, having to close his eyes against the sensual torment of her body as it was slowly revealed to him. "How long I waited to hear you say that."

Cho smiled sexily, and slid her hands up his naked torso. "So you've changed your mind then, and decided that mind-blowing sex with me is worth more than a poncy little bet?"

Harry raised an eyebrow and smirked at her. She all but quivered.

He deliberated, and then set her firmly away from him. "Not really, no."

"Why you teasing little prat!" Cho all but growled, hastily doing her blouse back up and straightening her skirt.

"Yes, I know. Irritating isn't it?" He grinned blithely.

Cho looked sulky.

"Oh, how the tables have turned," Harry said with gentle maliciousness.

"Oh, shut up you horrid little git," Cho burst out. "I never wanted you anyway, but when that Hermione bint owled me out of the blue and told me she and that idiot boyfriend of hers would give me a hundred galleons to shag you, I could hardly say no, could I? Even if you are completely beneath my notice! I never wanted you, not ever!"

Harry yawned. "You about done? I'd love to get some more sleep..."

"Ooooh!" she shrieked in frustration. "I hate you Harry Potter!"

"Funnily enough," Harry drawled, "I get that a lot. It seems to be losing its effect."

She shot him a death glare and then turned abruptly, flouncing from his room with a little arse-wiggle that once upon a time would have sent him into a stupor for three days.

Harry sat down on his bed like a puppet with its strings cut. The fact that Cho had blamed Hermione and Ron was only just penetrating the sleep-slash-arousal fog that had taken up residence where his brain was supposed to sit.

"Hermione and Ron?" Harry thought in confusion. "But why would they...? What the sod is going on?"

Harry stood up and, throwing on an old Quidditch t-shirt, stalked elegantly downstairs after Cho.

* * * *

 

Cho clomped down the stairs in her chunky heels. The sulky expression on her face did not do much for her appearance, instead she just looked miserable.

Ron and Hermione exchanged an incredulous glance.

"You're done already??" Ron asked in surprise. "Harry must be more hard up than I thought!"

Cho growled quietly. "He didn't want me," she enunciated quietly and succinctly, with more than a hint of disbelief in her tone.

"Oh," Hermione said. "How...unexpected."

Cho held out her hand, eyebrows raised into her thick fringe and an expectant look on her face.

"You don't actually think we're going to pay you now that you've failed?" Ron asked incredulously. "D'you think we're idiots, or what?"

Cho glared at him. "I tried. He was not interested. That is not my fault. I always thought he'd turn out gay, anyway."

Ron scoffed. "Actually," he said maliciously, "Harry is bi, and has shagged pretty much every good-looking girl, with the exception of Hermione, in the entire school. If he didn't want you, it must have been your fault."

Cho looked extremely pissed off. Then she grinned at the pair of them malevolently. "I told him it was you that paid me. He was unimpressed."

And then off she flounced, heels clicking sharply and arse-wiggle firmly in place. She was quite a flouncer, our Cho. Silly bint.

Ron and Hermione watched her go with a mixture of frustration and despair. They shared a look of trepidation.

"Oh crap," Ron said, paling as he heard vengeful footfalls on the stairs from the boys' dormitory. "Oh absolute crap!"

* * * *

Harry found the targets of his ire sitting opposite a chess board together by the fire, looking very innocent and charming with their red and bushy brown heads silhouetted in gold and crimson.

They simultaneously turned near-identical startled and nervous faces to him as he descended the stairs.

Harry glared at them.

This always worked.

"It wasn't meant to be mean, Harry!" Hermione burst out. "We just wanted you to have an easy out of the bet and for us to make some money. It wasn't really our fault, it was just an idea we came up with and we wanted you to finally get together with Cho and we didn't mean to make you mad and IT WAS ALL RON'S FAULT!"

Ron looked boot-faced. "MY fault?!" he screeched. "It was YOUR idea in the first place! I just went along with it!"

"Well, you didn't take much convincing, did you?" Hermione replied scathingly, conveniently forgetting the half hour she had just spent, oddly enough, convincing him.

Ron just glared at her incredulously.

"Ahem," Harry said, amused. "Not to interrupt, but hadn't someone better fill me in on what exactly is going on? I'd've thought that you two, of all people, would be the LAST to want me to have to cough up a thousand galleons, not that I can't afford it, to Draco Malfoy..."

"Erm," Hermione said indecisively. "Well..."

"Yes and no," Ron said diplomatically. "It's not that we wanted you to fail so much as we wanted to make money off you failing."

"And how in God's name does that work? Did Malfoy offer to pay you if you helped him to win the bet?"

"Not exactly," Ron replied, scratching an ear absently.

"THEN WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS ALL ABOUT?!!" Harry shouted at him, losing his patience entirely. He was gratified to see his best friends jump a foot in the air. All around him, groans could be heard from hung-over Gryffindors as they awoke reluctantly from their comas.

"There's a betting system," Hermione blurted out. "People can put a bet on each day of your month of celibacy, and win a pool if you fail on that day. We had a bet on for today."

"WHAT?!" Harry exploded.

"It's quite a clever system, actually. Seamus masterminded it, although it was originally Malfoy's idea. There's quite a lot of money involved -" Ron went on.

"How much?" Harry asked, suddenly supremely interested.

"The pool stood at two large last we checked. That would've been enough to settle your debt with Malfoy, pay Cho, and still have a bit left over, because there wasn't anyone else on for today - most people are betting on the third week, for some reason. Be worth it, really, wouldn't it?" Ron said.

Harry looked thoughtful. "How long has this been going on?" He was having very vengeful thought toward a certain blonde Slytherin.

"Since day one, mate."

"I think you'd better show me," Harry said, and went upstairs to get his cloak.

* * * *

Draco was sitting alone by the fire in the Slytherin common room when Ron and Hermione walked in. They left the portrait door open longer than was strictly necessary, he noted, but didn't comment.

"Weasley, Granger," he said quietly, sneering a little. "I notice that you've a bet on for today. How...interesting."

"We've, uh, actually decided that it probably wasn't the brightest idea," Ron said, going scarlet.

"Tried and failed already, Weasley?" Draco laughed, showing great astuteness.

"How'd you know?" Ron asked, incredulous, before Hermione could stop him.

"Look at the disappointed moue on Granger's face. It doesn't take a great feat of intuitive reasoning."

"What are you so happy about, Malfoy?" Hermione asked with little interest. "You look positively gleeful."

"I am not gleeful. I am distraught. You two, of all people, probably had the best chance at making Potter lose the bet - after all, you know about all his kinky little fantasies and sordid affairs...Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if a threesome with you two was the only sexual permutation Harry had yet to attempt, and therefore might be encouraged to try in pursuit of a complete sexual career."

There was a small, inexplicable, coughing 'ew' sound from one corner of the room.

"Therefore," Draco continued, undeterred, "if you were unable to make him lose control, he must have more will-power than I gave him credit for."

The corner gave a muffled noise that sounded remarkably like 'that's right, you git'.

Ron and Hermione looked up at the board, hiding their smiles. The last time they'd seen it, only a few names had been written up. Now the parchment was positively teeming with green writing, tallying up names and figures with alarming precision.

Ron squinted in surprise as he looked at day twenty-nine. "Malfoy..."

"What is it, Weasley? I don't have all day," Draco drawled.

"You've got your name down on the second to last day...what -?"

"Think what the pot will be at that point in time, Weasley. It makes perfectly good business sense to bet when the pool is at its absolute maximum. I shall just have to ensure that Harry fails on that particular day."

"What makes you think you'll succeed where everyone else fails?" Hermione asked, curiosity warring with distaste.

Draco just smiled enigmatically. "Don't you have places to be?" he asked boredly.

Ron and Hermione exchanged glances, and then looked meaningfully around at the verbose little corner of the room. Draco looked too, with great interest. In tandem the Gryffindor couple turned and headed out the portrait hole.

Harry didn't leave with them, choosing instead to remain and study the parchment before him in something akin to awe. The system was so elaborate, so well set up. It was quite astonishing. Even more astonishing was some of the names that were written up - McGonagall, Neville Longbottom, Seamus (on day four no less - so he WAS behind the Veela, Harry thought. That little potato-eating bastard! Oh, he will pay!), all the Ravenclaw girls he had slept with, a whole load of 'anon's', Terry Boot (I thought we were friends...), Millicent Bulstrode (boy am I sorry I shagged her...), the third year Gryffindors who had collectively formed the 'Harry Potter fan-club', Professor Snape, the list went on and on. Holy shit - even Trelawney had her name down for day twelve. Harry looked at that a long time, suddenly terrified.

With a slight whimper, Harry turned and fled from the room, failing, in his haste, to employ his customary stealth and instead snatching the portrait door open and slamming it behind him. It was all very uncouth.

As the portrait hole closed, Draco Malfoy smiled complacently.

So Potter finally knows, he thought meditatively, tenting his fingers under his chin and tapping either side of his jaw with his index fingers. He thought it made him look quite dashing.

This could make things very interesting indeed.


	5. Chapter 5

All Bets Are Off

 

Things get sticky

Harry tripped over a corner of his cloak and skidded to an inelegant halt outside the Slytherin dungeons, breathing erratically, and wide-eyed with shock. The betting system had come as something of a Surprise. He was seething like an emotional little cauldron, torn between depression, absolute outrage, complete fear, and reluctant admiration for the cunning of his sexy blonde nemesis, who had, incidentally, looked extremely hot lounging about on his leather couch - which was so obviously made for shagging on, by the way.

For a second, Harry debated acting on one of these many and varied emotions, but then found he couldn't really be bothered, and instead checked his reflection in a nearby mirror. With his cheekbones delicately flushed with emotion, his eyes feral, and his hair artfully mussed by his invisibility cloak, it was still extremely satisfactory. Thank God for Universal Truths, Harry thought fervently, and began to stalk toward the Gryffindor common-room.

"Where've you been?" Hermione asked as soon as he entered the room. "We were back ten minutes ago. I thought you'd been locked in or something!"

"I was taking a closer look at the betting system," Harry said, absently playing with his cloak and trying to think up a Really Good Way to announce his anger with them for buying into Malfoy's scheme.

Finally, he decided that a healthy dose of guilt might be just the ticket. "I can't believe you would go against me like that Ron, Hermione," Harry said, camping up the disillusioned moroseness, looking Really Hurt and Upset. "I'm really disappointed, you know?"

Ron and Hermione looked gutted.

"Of all people," Harry went on, "my two BEST friends in the entire world, ganging up against me just when I really need their support..." He trailed off as if overcome, enjoying their expressions of horror and self-loathing.

"Look, Harry, mate..." Ron started, but Harry held up a hand.

"No, Ron, I don't want to hear it. I don't think I can even talk to you right now," Harry said with an evil smirk that he hid by hanging his head in pretended pain. He sniffled dolefully.

Hermione rose from her chair in agitation. "We're sorry Harry!" she pleaded, on the verge of tears, her lower lip wobbling madly.

Harry glared at them both, and then burst out laughing.

They looked first astonished, and then boot-faced in equal measure.

"You're not really mad?" Ron asked incredulously. "Why, you rotten prat! Making us think - "

Harry sobered. "Oh I'm mad all right, but not with you so much. More with that git Malfoy. But don't think for a second that you're off the hook entirely, Ronald Weasley. I'll get you when you least expect it."

Ron looked suitably terrified. Hermione giggled.

"So what did you think of the betting system, Harry?" she asked with interest.

Harry hmm'd. "Interesting," he said musingly, only at the last minute refraining from stroking his chin absently. "Very interesting. Curious even, but if I said that it'd be a rip off. So I'll stick with a suitably non-committal and indifferent 'interesting' whilst making you think I'm Up To Something, if that's okay with you."

"Yep," Hermione said, looking back to her Charms homework.

"No worries," Ron added, and then turned back to staring absently at the fire, which was nearly as interesting.

Harry turned and headed up to his dorm.

Collapsing on his bed, Harry glanced at his bedside clock, and was surprised to find that it was only half-past three in the afternoon. Bollocks, he thought with almost suicidal depression. Still time to get some homework in.

On any other lazy Sunday afternoon, Harry would have spent hours upon hours with his hands full of the Woman of the Week (or Man of the Moment if that was his particular pleasure). He thought wistfully about the Sunday three weeks previous, which he had rather delightfully spent sprawled on his bed, having Little Miss Hogsmeade 1997 removing oh-so-accidentally spilt Honeyduke's Chocolicious Fudge Sauce� from his body -- with her tongue. Dwelling on the image, he suddenly found himself a little flustered and huffed disgustedly.

This really wasn't getting him anywhere. He needed action (and not that kind, either). He needed revenge against Draco Malfoy for his betting system, and against all the bastards who had written their names down. He needed a hangover cure. He needed a Really Cunning Plan.

And most of all, he needed a long, hot, languorous...soak in the tub.

* * * *

Two hours later, Harry wandered out of the prefects' bathroom (which, by the way, he was not legitimately entitled to use), wearing nothing but a rather inadequate blue towel and a satisfied grin, towelling his hair dry vigorously and leaving wet footprints all over the stone floor of the Gryffindor hallway. He had charmed the password out of Seamus a few weeks previously by hinting at very interesting and kinky sexual favours that he had wormed his way out of actually performing, and it had been well worth the effort. The bathroom had heated towels for crying out loud. That was worth some kind of risk - even the risk of being tied down and licked to death by a horny little Irish boy, disturbing as that mental image was.

Opening the portrait door, Harry sauntered into the common-room and allowed himself a brief, requisite pause to absorb all the positive pheromones being sent his way before continuing onward to his dorm. The firelight played enticingly over his near-naked form, and he looked every inch the gilded marble godlike person.

Ginny gasped and passed out in her armchair by the fire. It was fortunate, really, that it was such a soft surface. The tile floor of the Quidditch change-rooms last month had been far less amusing.

As Harry left the room, there were a few covert snickers. Harry frowned and paused. Call him cynical and suspicious, but the events of the past few days had made him a little nervous when sounds of that nature were about. He hung around inconspicuously, waiting to see if anyone would reveal anything, and then shrugged philosophically. Surely no-one else was going to attempt to shag him tonight. Surely. One attempt per day he could cope with. Any more might turn him into a frothing-at-the-mouth, raving, psychotic, gibbering, sex-crazed maniac. It was an unsettling thought.

He continued up to the dorms. As the door closed behind him, the common-room erupted into laughter.

Ron and Hermione exchanged glances. "Should we have told him that there are four near-naked fifth-year Ravenclaw girls waiting for him in his bed?" Ron asked, gnawing at his lower lip.

"Nah," Hermione said with a grin. "It's still our day, don't forget. If they succeed, we could still be in for some cash."

Ron glanced at her with interest. This side of her was new. Really, money-grubbing sadism was actually surprisingly attractive.

* * * *

As soon as Harry entered his room, there was a sharply spoken incantation, and the door behind him closed and locked with an ominous click.

Oh hell, Harry thought. What now?

There was a muffled, girlish giggle. Where had that come from?

Then the music started. It was slow, hot, unutterably sexy - Ginuwine moaning about saddles and vines and riding a pony or something. Whatever it was, the thick, slow, pulsing bass went straight to his spine and his groin, making his whole body pulse in time, his blood heavy and slow in his veins.

As Harry stood, stricken, by the door, his attention was drawn to his bed on the left-most side of the dorm room, where a practically naked female body had emerged from his bed-canopy, clad in a transparent pink wisp of something that did alarming things to his self control.

And then, if that wasn't bad enough, she was followed by one, no two...oh Holy Mother of God THREE of her friends, each in a similar state of studied undress. He was in hell. I must not succumb, he thought fervently, starting up a mantra. I must not succumb to multiple naked women in my bedroom, I must not...

As a group they advanced upon him, stalking and undulating slowly to the beat of the music. As they reached within two feet of him, the first girl, Miss Pink, pulled out her wand and pointed it at him.

"Er, hang on -" Harry started, mantra forgotten, but then found himself levitated and flying toward his bed. Despite the fact that he was airborne, he could only think one thing: 'Where the hell was she keeping that wand before she pulled it on me?' He landed on his bed, safely if inelegantly, and was immediately bound by his wrists and ankles, leaving him tastelessly sprawled and pretty much naked in his little towel, that was now hiding nothing. Ordinarily, this situation might have had a whole lot of kinky merit, he thought. Given the circumstances, however, he was more terrified than anything else. Well, except for agonisingly aroused, of course.

The bass still pulsed around him, making it nearly impossible for him to think clearly.

Then the girls started to dance in earnest. Thinking became an absolute non-event.

They absolutely writhed to the heavy beat, leisurely drawing their hands seductively up and down their own bodies in calculated rhythm, achingly slowly and so sexily that the air practically swam with it. Hips gently undulating, they drew their hands through their hair, down their necks to skim over their breasts, then down their abdomens to skirt their thighs, and back up all over again. Harry watched them in practically catatonic arousal, his eyes suddenly too heavy to be removed from the entrancing spectacle.

Then, oh GOD, they were touching each other, and Harry whimpered, his already aroused body stiffening in a rush. They ran lascivious hands across one another's hot, undulating forms, dirty danced hip-to-hip, thigh-to-thigh, chest-to-chest, whispered in one another's ears, their roaming hands everywhere. Harry watched, mute, his loins hot and hard, aching with agonising arousal. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think. Surely this couldn't get any worse?

Then two of the girls started slowly kissing, bodies still super-glued together and swaying gently with the sexy beat, and Harry found himself moaning, hands clenching convulsively, on the absolute verge of orgasm. Oh, not fair, not fair, he thought in agony. I don't deserve this!

The girls stopped necking and all four gave him identical ravenous grins. Slowly they walked toward where he lay on the bed and he shrank away in terror. Each one removed her not-really-there-anyway garment as she advanced, and suddenly he found himself surrounded by four, very naked Ravenclaw girls, all vying to see who could get her hands on the most sensitive portion of his anatomy first. It was agony.

"Tell us you want this, Harry," Miss Pink cajoled, hands deftly removing his towel. She knew there would be no payoff if Harry didn't give his consent. She and her girls would have to make him beg for it.

Sure, Harry thought. Just tell them you want it, and they'll finish you off. Come on, you know you want to. Just say yes.

"You know you want it. Just say those magic words, Harry," she said as one of her naked friends started laving his belly with her tongue, and yet another massaged his upper thigh enticingly.

"I, uh...oh GOD please stop doing this to me..." he moaned as one of the girls did something interesting with her tongue and his ear.

"Come on, Harry," they chorused in husky voices. "Give in."

Oh how he wanted to. He would have given his entire Chocolate Frog card collection to give in and say 'will you just shag me already!' But then he thought of the arrogant smirk on Malfoy's face when the bastard realised he had been right about Harry all along, and decided that he wasn't going to give the smug prat the satisfaction.

Even as he began to protest, however, one of the girls started to touch him right there with her mouth, and OH GOD it felt good and OH JESUS there was no WAY he was going to be able to say no if she kept doing THAT with her TONGUE and OH ABSOLUTE FUCKING CHRIST IN HIGH HEELS AND A MINISKIRT...OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK and he was just about to...

Come.

With an agonised moan, Harry gave in to it, but kept his mouth tightly closed against the assent that wanted to come spilling out, bearing it in silence. His hands clenched and his body arched, and suddenly it was over, and he closed his eyes in shame.

He had just come without shagging. That hadn't happened in more than two years.

How completely fucking humiliating.

The Ravenclaw girls sat around in stunned, morose silence. This was an unforseen development. They had apparently overestimated his staying power.

And as they sat there in uncomfortable silence, the music still bleating away in a corner, there came a great renting 'wwwiiiiaaaaooooowwww' noise that could only have been either God descending to wreak his wrath upon Harry for blasphemy, or an alarm of some sort. Harry looked around in panic, whilst the Ravenclaw girls simply looked resigned and irritated.

"What the hell?!" Harry shouted over the noise as he struggled to untie himself. What if there was a fire? He might be burned to death! A candidate national tragedy if ever he heard one...

"The alarm," Miss Pink said dully. "Get dressed girls, they'll all be here in a minu-"

On cue, the door burst open and an entire crowd of cheering, grinning, wide-eyed Gryffindors jostled into the room, their laughing and shouting drowning out even the roaring alarm.

Seeing the scene however, with a slumped Harry still tied up and mercifully shielded by the naked Ravenclaw girls, all of whom wore Very Disappointed expressions, they fell silent.

There was relative quiet for a moment as the four girls re-donned their outfits. Miss Pink belatedly untied Harry and covered him with his towel in a rare and deeply appreciated act of benevolence.

"What's going on?" Dean Thomas asked in confusion, as the magical alarm blared once more, and then fell silent.

"Yeah! Why aren't you celebrating? You're richer than God now!" Parvati Patil added for good measure.

"Oh, go back to your common-room you silly gits!" Miss Pink said impatiently. "He didn't say yes! It was NOT consensual, therefore it doesn't count. We didn't win the money!"

There was an audible groan from the crowd in the doorway, who paused reluctantly for a moment, and then turned as one and walked away.

They trooped back into the common-room, gossiping and speculating wildly.

Ginny awakened from her stupor just in time to see four disgruntled Ravenclaws wearing very little clothing stalk out of the portrait hole. "What happened?" she asked in confusion, seeing everyone's faces.

Hermione told her.

"Oh good-o," Ginny said brightly.

Everyone gawked at her.

She grinned unrepentantly. "My money's on for next week!"

* * * *

By the following morning, the story was all over the school. Everyone had, of course, heard the alarm, but the particulars of the situation were still largely unknown, and the Gryffindors believed it was their sworn duty to whisper every juicy, salacious detail with great glee to anyone that would listen - which was everyone from the giggling first year Hufflepuffs to a loitering Professor McGonagall.

"...Did you hear? Harry lost his load last night without them even touching him! I heard he only lasted thirty seconds! Boy, he must be hard up!"

"...No way, I heard it was more like ten seconds, and then afterward he cried like a baby! Can you believe it?! Not so sexy now, is he...?"

With each escalation of the rumours, the betting system just about overloaded with new wagers. Harry Potter was NOT invincible, it seemed, and suddenly every man and his dog wanted to get in on the action. The pool skyrocketed.

And Draco Malfoy just watched it all from his corner with a superior smirk. Oh how the mighty have fallen, he thought blissfully, and with no small amount of complacency.

Everything was working out according to plan. Which was quite easy, really, when the only plan was 'make Harry Potter suffer and die'.

* * * *

Harry, however, remained fortunately unaware of all this nonsense, preferring to stay in his dormitory instead of attending breakfast. Preferring, of course, in the way that the desert might prefer it to rain at some point, or the starving masses of Africa would prefer to eat food every day (i.e. preferring in the sense that not doing so was a physical impossibility). His cheeks flushed with embarrassment at the mere thought of going downstairs and facing the firing squad. Later, he thought. Later I'll be more able to cope. Just not right now.

He groaned and stuffed his fists in his tired eyes, sprawling carelessly across his bed (which had been quickly and courteously taken care of last night by obsequious House Elves who were well used to Harry's bedroom antics and had learned to make special trips for him). Oh bloody buggering hell, he thought. There really is no lower place for me than this place: right here, right now. I have hit absolute rock bottom. I am now officially depressed. I can no longer claim my place as rightful king of Hogwarts. I will be slaughtered for this. Absolutely eviscerated. The gossip mill will have my balls for trophies. I don't think I'm going to be able to cope...

This is all that fucking prick Malfoy's fault, Harry thought savagely, and not for the first time. Oh, I need to make him PAY!

Despite all of this angst, he did feel better after last night, if only because the fog of arousal that had permanently clouded his brain for the past two weeks had dissipated a little bit.

Right, he thought. This is getting me nowhere. It's time to face the music. Plus, I'm fucking starving.

Harry wandered downstairs dressed in his Sexy Navy Blue Polo-neck Jumper and an old, faded pair of jeans. The common room was mercifully empty, and he opened the portrait hole with a relieved grin.

The grin, however, faded slightly as he emerged from the door into a catcalling, cheering crowd of students, all of whom were clapping and laughing and jeering and waiting to hear the real story. Half of Hogwarts seemed pleased that he'd succumbed and proved himself human after all; the other half were grateful that he hadn't yet lost the bet and that there was still a chance for them to earn some money; and yet another half (okay, so Harry hadn't done maths since he was ten, give him a break!) were pissed off with him for not giving in to the Ravenclaws - granted, most of these had had their money down for yesterday. Regardless of which half the students belonged to, all were laughing at him.

Harry was Absolutely Embarrassed. Still, he thought with his usual optimism, better embarrassed than being eaten alive by a raging band of rabid hippogriff-skrewt hybrids.

So he'd just have to grin and bear it, hoping that some more interesting piece of gossip came along in the interim to take everyone's mind off his own recent actions. Hitching a devastating smile on his face, Harry held up his hands for a second's peace. The jostling crowd fell mostly silent.

"Guys, don't you have better things to do?" Harry asked with his patented cheeky grin that sent most people in the front row into a light-headed daze. "Give a guy a break here..."

"But Harr-eee," someone whined, "we want to know what really happened last night. The Ravenclaw girls aren't talking, so all we've got are little tidbits here and there. Come on Harry, spill it!"

Harry deliberated. Hm. On one hand, he could tell the truth and let them laugh. On the other hand he could make something up to make himself look better. And on the other, other hand, he could refuse to say anything and let the rumours speak for themselves, which was a less attractive option.

"Well," he drawled slowly to give himself thinking time, "I don't know..."

They started clamouring.

"Come on, Harry!"

"Spit it out..."

"Yeah, come on, tell us! You know we'll make something up anyway...isn't it better to tell the truth?"

Suddenly someone blonde pushed to the front of the crowd and smirked at Harry. "Yes, Harry. Please, by all means, enlighten us..." Draco Malfoy drawled bitingly, eyebrow raised in challenge. "Wouldn't want anyone getting the wrong idea..." As he himself had been responsible for many of the outrageous rumours now flying round the castle, this was a bit rich, really.

Harry's eyes narrowed as he took in the sexy, black-clad form of his nemesis and fingered his wand reflexively. The rest of the crowd drew back a little - it was a wise move; from the looks of things, hexes could start flying around any minute, and no-one wanted to be in the way of a stray curse aimed between these two enemies. They tended to be quite liberal with the use of extremely painful and potentially death-inducing ones.

"Malfoy," Harry spat. "Want something? Or are you merely here to fill my irritation quota for the day?"

Draco's eyes darkened, taking in Harry's smouldering anger and the rather interesting use of the words 'want something'. Yes, Draco did want something. Something that sounded a lot like Larry, only starting with an 'H'. But damned if he'd let Harry know that little fact.

"I'm here for the same reason as everyone else, Potter," Draco drawled with amusement. "To discover the real story. Is it true that you broke your dick falling off the bed when two fully dressed Hufflepuff boys tried to kiss you? That's what I heard."

Everyone laughed. Harry scowled.

"Or perhaps the other rumour involving a golf club, two dozen eggs, Professor Sprout, Madame Pomfrey and a tube of hand lotion was more accurate?" Draco was enjoying himself now. "Maybe it was the one about the Slytherin first year...which was pretty fucking disgus-"

"Or perhaps," Harry interrupted with gritted teeth, "four Ravenclaw girls tied me to the bed, gave me a joint strip-tease and then sucked me off until I came, all the while trying to make me beg for it, which I didn't do. Which sounds a more likely story to you?"

The crowd goggled with interest.

Draco grinned, thinking of that particular image with much interest. "Oh I don't know, Potter, that story about the first year is really quite interesting once you hear it all..."

"You are a sick fuck, Malfoy," Harry spat, flexing his fingers longingly around his wand.

"I'm not the one who supposedly tied myself to a bedpost with Filch's bondage equipment and was seduced by Mrs Norris, Potter," Draco laughed out loud. "I suppose that theory has merit - the bet isn't technically violated by any sexual interactions with animals..."

Harry was losing his grip on his temper. Everyone waited for fireworks.

Then, with alarming speed, Harry's face glossed over with an urbane and charming smile. The change was astonishing - from glowering beast to grinning politician in a microsecond.

He smirked seductively at Draco. "Mrs Norris and I have a weekly arrangement, Malfoy," he said smoothly, and with a mocking, campy drawl. "She was unaware of the bet, and therefore can not be held accountable. She is insatiable, though. A real dyed-in-the-wool wildcat, so to speak. Just wouldn't take no for an answer..."

There was a stunned silence.

"What?" Harry grinned unrepentantly. "You didn't think I'd managed to get away with sneaking round this place after curfew all this time on my own cunning, did you?"

And the crowd howled with laughter. Even Draco's mouth curved momentarily with a reluctant grin. Had to hand it to the boy, he was a born showman.

"Far be it from me to condemn your interactions with your favourite pussy, Potter." Draco grinned snarkily. "Just don't forget to limit it to the non-human variety. I'll be keeping an eye on you..." He gave Harry a smouldering glare, and then turned and stalked off down the corridor, looking decidedly hot. There was no evil chuckle this time - he was too busy thinking of how sexy Harry had looked in That Outfit.

Harry turned back to the crowd and gave them a grin, making an excuse about visiting the kitchens for a snack before Transfigurations. He left them gawking as he sauntered off, his customary swagger exaggerated to campy proportions, so he looked almost like a runaway llama. Still, it was surprisingly sexy.

* * * *

Harry survived the day by the absolute skin of his teeth. The night was no easier. Nor was the next day, or the next. He was absolutely besieged by rumours and gossip, girls of both sexes angling for a shag, teachers making pithy remarks, and Draco Malfoy, who, true to his word, was shadowing Harry's every move.

It pissed him off immeasurably. Still, as to the last, Harry couldn't seem to muster up the enthusiasm to mind.

Perhaps this had something to do with how completely attractive his new shadow was. Odd, really, how having something adorable to look at will take the edge off any kind of irritation. Sort of the same concept as having gorgeous nurses in vasectomy clinics. Or not.

Harry had become nearly as obsessed with Draco Malfoy as Draco was with Harry. Poetic justice, much? He was utterly riveted by his nemesis, not least because the Slytherin was so absolutely shaggable, with his sleek blonde hair slicked back from a face with impeccable bone structure, cheekbones harder and sharper than a sabre and a big, pouty mouth that just begged you to pash it...erm, getting carried away, sorry. Anyway, it wasn't just Draco's assets that were holding Harry's attention. Harry had become obsessed with wreaking an immeasurable amount of vengeance upon the Slytherin Sex God. Every time Harry felt even a hint of arousal, of discomfort or embarrassment, every time he even caught a whiff of a defaming rumour or a plot to seduce him, he blamed Draco Malfoy and damned him to the depths of the bastard's non-existent soul. He would pay Malfoy back for this bet bollocks if it were the absolute last thing he did.

Judging by the way he felt now, death from unappeased arousal was looking a more and more imminent probability, so it really possibly would be the last thing he did, which was a depressing thought. And he blamed Malfoy for it entirely.

He thought of Draco when he awakened each day, and every hour on the hour until bed time, at which point, well, he thought about Malfoy some more. He didn't know when the line blurred between dwelling on his plans for avenging his current agony by making his nemesis suffer, and simply dwelling on his nemesis full stop. Either way, the broody, frowny, I'm-going-to-go-stab-someone-with-a-meat-cleaver look was quite a good one for him.

He was still thinking about Malfoy on Wednesday afternoon, day twelve of the month Harry was beginning to think of as his own personal hell. Fortunately, however, the betting tally had apparently taken a day off, which was a very timely reprieve; Harry had awakened in the middle of a Malfoy dream the previous night with his left hand precariously close to...erm, violating the strictures of the bet, and any attempts to seduce him this morning might've met with more success than anticipated. Still, he had yet to survive Divination.

Trelawney was reclining in an armchair at the front of the room, a typically idiotic expression on her face. As Harry entered, however, her expression turned calculating. She had laid a decent chunk of money on for today, having read the stars and numbers and decided that twelve was a most auspicious day for seducing young wizard students on a month's enforced celibacy. Harry Potter, she thought wickedly, you'd better watch out. You're about to get a crash course in Sybill Trelawney's language of lurve 1.01.

Harry settled next to a grinning Ron on a fluffy pink pouffe which wriggled around until it encased him properly, then subsided with a little sigh. Trelawney cast a half-supercilious, half-surprised glance around the room, in a manner similar to one suddenly finding a slug in one's lettuce, and then gave a dreamy smile.

"Today, dears, we will be covering the usage of tarot cards," she breathed and then waited, as if for applause. Perhaps to her, this seemed the most interesting pronouncement any person had ever made in the history of humankind.

Harry was of a slightly different opinion, and so he allowed his thoughts to wander as Trelawney went into ecstasies over the basic uses of the cards in fortune-telling. Funny, really, how even though Divination was Slytherin-free, he could conjure Draco Malfoy in his imagination as easily as if it were he who was sitting beside Harry, laughing at Trelawney's inane ramblings, instead of Ron.

Enough of this, my lad, Harry thought to himself. I must clear my mind and allow myself to enter the divine state of true unconsciousness to survive this lesson intact.

Harry promptly fell asleep.

He was woken by a soft, seductive voice whispering in his ear.

"Mr Potter," it said in a breathy, dreamy tone that sent involuntary shivers chasing each other down Harry's spine.

Harry came awake with an adorable snuffle and looked around blearily. The fires and candles in the tower had burned low, lending a seductive glow to the conspicuously student-free room that spilled over the low chairs and tables like honey. Incense was burning more heavily than usual, and the air was perfumed with hot, drugging spices that made it hard to clear his head of sleep-fog.

Harry blinked as he found his lap suddenly full of someone-or-other, Miss Sexy Voice. Without warning a mouth mashed to his with all the finesse of a half-grown mountain troll and Harry felt all the breath go out of him with surprise. A tongue invaded his mouth, followed by a whole lot of saliva, and Harry almost gagged. It was the yuckiest thing he had ever experienced, and that included being pashed by Neville Longbottom in sixth year. He firmly pushed whoever-it-was away from him and she gurgled in frustration.

"Harry," she panted breathily. "You know you want this. Give in to me. It is written in the stars. It is destiny, Harry. You can't fight it..." 

With a sickening jolt, Harry recognised the owner of the voice and pushed her away, standing up with a yelp of disgust that a brave soul might've called a shriek.

"Professor Trelawney?! What the hell d'you think you're doing?!" Harry gasped, barely refraining from retching.

She looked at him in surprise. "Kissing you, Harry," she said, with an arch smile that made her look fifty, which she probably was.

"Why?!?!" Harry gurgled, fighting the urge to wipe his tongue with his shirt. Ew-w, who knew where her tongue had been? Last Harry had heard, Trelawney was having it off with Snape! Yuck yuck yuck...

"It was foreseen by the mystical forces of planetary alignment, Harry. Transcribed in the pattern of the heavenly bodies," she said, attempting to kiss him again.

Harry put two and two together. "Bollocks!" he shouted. "I remember now! You had a bet on today, you conniving old bat! How dare you try to use me like that?!"

"It is true, Harry," Trelawney said with no little amount of bitterness in her tone. "I have wronged you. But I won't apologise. I need that money, Harry. You could help a woman out here, and just give up. One little...er, indiscretion, and I'd be a rich woman. I'd have enough to get out of here, Harry. Enough to set up that bordello I'd always wanted. I really need that money. We could work out a deal...you want top marks in your Divination NEWT don't you? I could help you, Harry. We could help each other..." She advanced on him briskly, taking his silence for assent.

Harry looked at her meditatively. "You," he snapped peevishly, "can take your money and your Divination grade and shove it right up Uranus, you old bint. I'd rather die than shag you."

Still she came, a sickening expression on her face. "You know you want me, Harry," she said, and snatched up one of his hands, placing it on a saggy old breast with a prideful expression, as if she expected him to be impressed.

"Yeeeaarrrgh!" Harry exclaimed and snatched his hand back savagely. He turned on his heel and ran, bolting through the trapdoor and down the ladder at a great rate of knots, and unfortunately fell flat on his face. He dragged himself up and ran toward Gryffindor tower, not looking back. The number of times Harry had fallen down the past few days, it was a wonder he was still pretty, really.

Sybill Trelawney wandered over to her desk and sat, sighing into her herbal tea. Oh well, only a hundred Galleons down the drain, she thought. At least I got to snog Harry Potter...

Harry went straight from Divination to the prefect's bathroom, was violently ill, and then proceeded to brush his teeth for five straight hours.

Draco Malfoy was going to have to die a thousand deaths to pay for that one.

* * * *

Draco, blissfully unaware of all the angst and vengeful thoughts being directed his way, sprawled on his leather couch and watched the betting parchment with a speculative eye. Ever since, well, day one, Draco had found himself having a hard time staying on track with his grandiose plans of slowly seducing Harry so that the poor boy broke on day twenty-nine, the day on which Draco had laid a thousand Galleon bet. Every time he saw Harry (which was extremely frequently, given that Draco had made it his personal quest to become Harry's shadow over the past week), he had found himself losing his train of thought, becoming incapable of his usual witty and scathing remarks, incapable of even stringing sentences together, let alone implementing a carefully calculated plan of seduction. His unexpected reaction to Harry was becoming a major hitch in his plans.

The gratuitous groping during Quidditch last weekend had been very diverting, but ultimately unsuccessful, as had the numerous inflammatory remarks he'd casually thrown at Harry over the past few days, not to mention the innuendoes and slightly overzealous 'accidental' touching incidents these situations had precipitated. Harry was not even close to the level of discomfort that Malfoy had intended when he had made this bet. He wanted Harry so permanently aroused that he was hallucinating, so agonised that Professor Snape started looking like an attractive prospect. Draco wanted Harry on the verge of suicide. And he was going to have to use every weapon in his arsenal of seduction to get him there.

"I think it's time to implement phase two..." Draco murmured with a malicious smile. "Operation Make Potter Suffer is about to get underway." Token mwa-ha-ha and cut to sinister black with eerie violin music.

Oh help.

This is about to get rough.


	6. Chapter 6

Malfoys don't quiver...

After the Trelawney incident, Harry started avoiding people.

He took to hiding in convenient broom closets and empty classrooms; took his Firebolt and flew away from Hogwarts at every opportunity; spent his evenings hidden in a cobwebby corner of the library that no-one ever visited because it was supposedly haunted by a chain-wielding transvestite maniac; didn't go to bed until he was certain all his dorm-mates were asleep, and even then cast so many locking charms on the doors that Albus Dumbledore himself couldn't have entered the room uninvited. He boycotted Divination altogether. And he had managed to successfully avoid Draco Malfoy for the last five days.

His life was suddenly very dull. He was used to evenings spent charming the socks (and most other items of clothing) off of someone or other, or in the Gryffindor common-room regaling his housemates with anecdotes of his conquests and adventures; he was used to chatting to Ron and Hermione for hours about Quidditch and owls and classes and Hagrid's latest idiotic breeding experiments; he was used to being in the thick of every after-hours prank or kitchen-run; always the centre of attention, basking in the glow of other peoples' admiration and respect.

He was not accustomed to entertaining himself reading books on revenge tactics, ancient weaponry and undetectable poisons, as was his current custom. Revenge was boring. He missed people.

He missed Draco Malfoy too, but he'd die before admitting that to anyone.

Still, it was a relatively uneventful week after that Divination class that Harry leaned his fevered cheek against the cold tile wall of the communal Quidditch showers and sighed with relief. He was alone. Thanks be to Merlin and his fur-coat-wearing pimp. Even with Harry's sudden avoidance strategies, he was still besieged by gawking students, even gawking Professors. The leers and the seductive wiles of every girl that thought she had a chance at making him break his resolution were common-place by now. He was coping with the barrage of seduction schemes and pornographic images scattered everywhere he might find them, with the probing questions of his house-mates and the relentless, unending teasing. All of these things he had learned to cope with. They were not the problem.

No, it was his own thoughts that had, over the past week, begun to drag him down into the gutter like ravening, horny little beasts. Nasty, horrid things, thoughts are, Harry decided. Much better off without them.

And, naturally, he spent the next several minutes standing under the scalding water, thinking. About Draco Malfoy, mostly. Which was disturbing enough in and of itself, without the fact that the blonde Slytherin only ever appeared in Harry's mind naked and pouting, particularly in the recent days since Harry had started to avoid him. Needless to say, Harry was freaking out.

Quidditch practice with the Hufflepuffs that afternoon hadn't helped to take his mind off things the way he had hoped it would. Rather, all that time with his hands on his stick had made him conjure up some really, really interesting images. Harry was certain that not only was it improbable that anyone would put their tongue there, but that it wasn't possible to do that whilst riding a unicorn, and he was equally certain that Draco Malfoy didn't even like strawberries, and would therefore be highly unlikely to eat them off Harry's naked belly in the middle of Gryffindor tower, regardless of how persuasive Harry was.

One of the fantasies involving ice cubes, leather and a bathtub of chocolate syrup had grown so disturbing that Harry found himself quite unable to sit still.

Leaping off his broom mid-Wronsky Feint wasn't the most elegant Quidditch move Harry had ever attempted, but it had served the highly effective purpose of distracting him from his aching arousal with wave upon wave of agonising pain. So that was good.

Harry groaned loudly and morosely. Turning to face the wall, he braced both palms against the tiles and tilted his head back into the stinging needles of spray. He wondered idly if it was possible to wash one's face off, and then hurriedly desisted. Just in case.

He looked down at himself and sighed resignedly. Christ, he still had two bloody weeks to go, and he was on permanent semi. It really couldn't get much worse, right?

Enter sexy, half-naked, blonde arch-nemesis.

* * * *

Draco couldn't keep the smirk from his face as he observed the Gryffindor seeker from the doorway of the showers. He sometimes wondered if Hogwarts wasn't trying to turn everyone homosexual. I mean, with a view like that in a communal shower setting, there were only so many places the imagination could go. All were very non-girl related.

Towel slung low about his slender hips, Draco sauntered across the tiles, swinging his soap and whistling the striptease horn solo. Really, he was wasted on these Plebians - he was so obviously born for the stage. He wished Harry would turn around and look at him, but the poor sod was evidently trying to hold the wall up all by himself, and Draco thought it best for now that Harry left his hands where they were against the tiles. By the look of the raging hard-on Harry was sporting, they were probably better kept otherwise occupied, else Potter might find himself holding his own, and it would never do for him to lose the bet on a careless shower wank. Draco had bigger plans for Mr. Potter.

Draco smirked evilly as he thought about those 'bigger plans'.

Draco eased his towel off and swung it over a nearby rail. Glancing over his shoulder at Potter's rather spectacular back view, he felt his stomach quiver. He growled at himself. Malfoys do NOT quiver, he told himself viciously. He couldn't believe he was actually excited about taking a shower in the presence of Harry Potter. Who is taunting whom here, he asked himself savagely, and turned the hot water on. Sliding under the spray, he let the heat relax him, and planned his next move, eyes never leaving the undeniably spectacular figure of the boy across the room.

* * * *

Harry kept his eyes closed even though he heard someone enter through the far door. He was so absorbed in his mingled frustration and arousal that he was actually quite unable to look around. He just stayed where he was, braced against the wall, body taut as a bowstring with tension and craving.

He was too terrified to reach for the soap in case he found himself unable to keep his hands away from his cock. It was a bit of a worry. In any case, the heat felt so nice that he could've happily stayed where he was forever, slowly washing himself down the drain.

He frowned as Malfoy sashayed into his thoughts again. Bloody git Malfoy, Harry thought savagely. Sashaying around like he owns the place, the poncy bloody toff. This is all that sodding, sadistic bastard's fault. Harry proceeded to curse Malfoy viciously and repeatedly. It took a good three minutes until he had exhausted his basic vocabulary and was forced to fabricate combinations involving barnyard animals, school Professors and various garden implements. He hadn't realised he was speaking aloud until a drawl came from across the room.

"Truthfully, I think the pain involved in that would probably negate any sexual gratification, Potter. I also think that the animal rights activists might have something to say..."

Harry's gut lodged itself in his larynx. Oh hell. It was bloody Malfoy.

Harry tried to think of a scathing reply but couldn't seem to think past the 'eep' that was holding court in his head.

"I'm all for creativity, of course," Malfoy continued, watching Harry's shoulders tense up with a smirk, "But really, even I would draw the line at shagging a donkey with a pitchfork...Then again, judging by your questionable association with Mrs Norris, I suppose you're of the mindset that 'anything goes', right?"

Harry swung round to glare at Malfoy. It was a mistake. If Harry had thought that Draco was adorable in his clothes, then he was completely unprepared for the absolute vision that stood before him in its naked entirety. Draco was a complete Adonis. The shower spray had made him all shimmery and sleek and fuckable, with his hair slicked back from the impeccable bone structure of his face, and his toned body gleaming in the dim light.

Harry mouthed ineffectually. His ability to be a suave sex god seemed to have taken a temporary leave of absence. Sodding thing.

Draco smirked.

Harry was mortified to find himself stiffening at the very sight.

Smirk deepening, Draco very deliberately allowed his eyes to wander over Harry's face, lingering on the perfect planes and shadows. They slid lower to the hard, taut column of his throat, the muscular breadth of his shoulders, his flat, solid chest. Oh, thank Merlin for Quidditch, Draco thought lasciviously. The boy is edible! Making Harry lose this bet was going to be the more fun than...Draco tried to think of something he had done in his life that was actually fun. Er...a really fun thing, he concluded lamely, glad he wasn't speaking aloud.

He allowed his eyes to skim back up and meet Harry's. The green shards were intense and frightening. Harry's breath hitched in his throat. Draco was irritated to find his own breathing had become rather erratic in response. He gave Harry a mocking wink before returning to his deliberate perusal of Harry's assets, grey eyes inadvertently heating as he took in the lean flanks, flat, ridged abdomen; and lower, the thick, hard length of Harry. If Draco hadn't been a Malfoy, he'd have drooled. However, Malfoys did not drool. He made do with rather a great degree of salivation.

"Meep," Harry whimpered as he turned himself away from those hot, hot eyes, trying to get himself under some semblance of control. There were no words to express the depths of his absolute, unbelievable humiliation. I mean, this wasn't just your everyday, run-of-the-mill blush-inducing embarrassment we're talking about here. This was curl up and die, fall into a convenient nearby bottomless pit, turn into an insubstantial puddle of goo mortification. He felt a deep crimson flush stain his cheekbones and groaned in misery. His worst enemy had just about made him come with a single smouldering look. He may as well die right now. Harry resisted the impulse to swoon theatrically.

He had never been so hot for anyone in his life. Fucking Malfoy.

Draco, meanwhile, was finding his own life suddenly remarkably difficult as he was again faced with Harry's rather delectable back view. Having successfully managed to make Harry very uncomfortable, he was unexpectedly struck by a very similar malady and cursed under his breath as he turned away.

Better make a quick get away while he was still ahead, Draco decided, the little voice of his subconscious adding 'and while Harry still remains clueless as to the fact that you're now as hard as he is'. Shut up, Draco thought violently. The little voice was not brave, and quickly subsided.

Switching off his taps and slinging the towel back around himself with a little artful arranging here and there to hide the evidence of his arousal, Draco sauntered slowly toward Harry. He didn't speak, preferring instead to silently enjoy the tension in the air that increased with every step he took, and the way that Harry seemed to shrink away as he tried to maintain as much distance as possible between them.

Finally, Draco stopped behind Harry, not touching him but making sure that Harry knew exactly how close he was, his mouth not an inch from Harry's ear. He deliberately curled a hand around Harry's body and ran a careless finger down the length of him.

A physical shudder tore through Harry's body, and he found himself moaning in agony. He was surprised to taste blood in his mouth. Apparently that will happen when you try and chew right through your bottom lip.

Still running restless fingers very slowly and seductively up and down the length of Harry's shaft, Draco slowly brought his mouth even closer to the other boy's ear, running his tongue idly around the outer shell, and whispered "Better take care of that Potter. Might put somebody's eye out."

He then stepped back, and with an evil smile turned to walk away. Almost as an afterthought, he reached back and deliberately turned off Harry's hot tap.

He was out of the room before a gasping, spluttering Harry had finished choking on the freezing spray.

Harry remained shivering under the icy water for a very long time.

* * * *

Back in the Slytherin dorms, Draco flung himself, elegantly of course, onto his bed and groaned. His body was still hard and humming from the little encounter back in the showers, and it was merrily ignoring Draco's orders to get back under control. Thank Merlin for big, baggy, voluminous robes, Draco thought fervently. He'd've had a difficult time explaining a raging pedro to the rest of his housemates who were lounging around in the common room, keeping an eye on the tally board and speculating about who would win the pool. How would it look to say 'I've just been teasing Harry Potter unmercifully down at the showers, but an unfortunate side effect of playing around with the sexiest boy you've ever seen is that you wind up imitating an oak plank yourself...'? Idiotic, that's what it'd look like. And Malfoys do not do idiotic.

Quit it! Draco shouted at himself as he found his right hand creeping southward down his belly. I will not let Harry Potter defeat me like this. Fucking, fucking bastard, how dare he do this to me?! I am a fucking Malfoy! Malfoys do not shag their own hands thinking about other boys. Especially bloody Potters! This is simply not on.

Draco needed positive action. He needed vengeance. And most of all, he needed to get rid of his fucking erection.

Wandering back down stairs, he let his eyes seek out a likely candidate. Without thinking, or asking for that matter, he stalked over to a gossiping Pansy Parkinson and picked her up, tossing her over his shoulder and walking back up to his dormitory.

Pansy squealed excitedly. "Draco, what is the meaning of this cavalier treatment?" she shrieked coyly. As if the silly bint didn't know, Draco thought dismissively.

"I want you. I need you. I cannot wait, I must have you, Pansy darling," Draco deadpanned, opening the door of his dorm and entering the room, tossing Pansy dispassionately on the bed and turning back to cast a locking and silencing charm on the door.

He then stalked, catlike, toward the bed, fixing Pansy with those killer eyes that screamed 'you are not going to be walking straight tomorrow!'

Pansy melted, just as she always did. She rose to her knees to meet him as he reached the edge of the bed, and tossed her head back as his mouth hit her throat, his hands concurrently sliding down her backside and lifting her hips to meet his.

"Hello, you," Pansy murmured, feeling Draco's erection slide across her pelvic bone. "You weren't kidding, were you?"

"I am desperate to be inside you, my love," Draco lied.

Pansy smiled and pushed Draco's robes from his body, tearing his shirt in her haste to have him naked. He more sedately started unbuttoning her blouse, but closed his eyes as her body was revealed. He didn't want to look at her. He kissed her instead, and she went liquid in his arms.

Things got rather heated from then on. Draco pushed Pansy back onto the bed and kissed her ferociously, hands everywhere, and Pansy writhed beneath him in pleasure. It wasn't often that the sexy blonde deigned to sleep with her, but when he did it was always ecstatic.

As Draco was running his hands under her skirt, her pants coming apart in his hands and his mouth moving across her collarbone, he was suddenly struck with an image of an undulating, naked Harry Potter beneath him, moaning his name, and nearly fell off the bed.

Go away, he thought at the Phantom Potter in panic.

Draco continued to kiss and touch Pansy anywhere he could reach, sliding his tongue down into her cleavage. She shuddered in pleasure and moaned, her hands at the laces of his trousers.

The sound of her moan was too high a register, Draco thought idly. He privately admitted that the sounds that Harry Potter was making earlier were rather a lot more appealing...and then he nearly died when he realised the foolishness of what he was thinking. Phantom Potter chose that moment to stage a comeback, and whispered sexily in Draco's ear. "You know you want me, Draco," he said. "You know you don't want anyone but me." Phantom Potter wandered through Draco's mind, making himself at home and taking off his clothes. Very Slowly.

Leave me alone, Draco pleaded, his mouth moving down across Pansy's breasts. She was mewling and panting pathetically. "Oh God," she gasped, as Draco's tongue slid across her ribs. "Oh Draco...Oh God!"

One and the same, Draco thought with a smirk.

In his mind, Phantom Potter was down to a rather tight pair of leather trousers and a sexy smirk the size of Great Britain.

Draco concentrated fiercely on Pansy. He started swirling his tongue in and out of her navel, hoping against hope that Phantom Potter wouldn't take off any more clothes.

Ignoring his pleas, Phantom Potter slid his trousers off his naked - 'Oh God, naked' thought Draco - hips and advanced on a terrified Draco with a sexy, menacing expression.

"Oh Draco," Pansy purred.

"Oh Draco," Phantom Potter groaned in his ear. "I want you too..."

And that did it. Pictures of Harry flooded through Draco's mind -- Harry playing Quidditch, ferocious and focussed and unutterably sexy; Harry in potions, laughing at the Weasel and looking adorably unruffled as Snape glared and took points from Gryffindor; Harry deliberately snogging Draco's girlfriend Millicent Bulstrode in the Slytherin corridor just to pay Draco back for being a ponce in class; Harry the sex god dismissing girl after girl at the breakfast table...Harry in the showers just now, taut and hard and moaning with arousal, a sound that Draco found he wanted to hear again and again and again.

Draco closed his eyes and shuddered. He couldn't take it. Get OUT of my HEAD Potter! he shouted in his mind, but the images kept coming. And coming. And suddenly Draco was coming as well. With an agonised moan, he buried his face in the crook of Pansy's neck to stop himself shouting Harry's name, and spilled himself onto the sheets.

He rode it out and then rolled away from her, flopping down on the bed and groaning in misery.

Pansy was gasping beside him with unfulfilled arousal, her skirt around her hips, shirt open, bra crooked and pants, well, quite conspicuously absent, actually. Her lipstick was smeared across her swollen mouth, her face was flushed and her eyes feverish and unfocussed. She looked infinitely shaggable, and Draco could only look at her with absolute non-arousal, hating himself and Harry Potter in equal measure. It was quite a lot.

"Draco, what was that all about?" Pansy whispered in confusion, tugging her shirt closed reluctantly. She couldn't believe it was finished already. How...unsatisfying. "That's never happened before. Is something wrong?"

Draco rolled off the bed and leaned his back against the nearest wall, hands doing up the laces of his pants as he looked at the ceiling with unseeing eyes.

"Yes Pansy, something is wrong," he said very slowly. "Very wrong indeed."

After all, not a whole hell of a lot is right, thought Draco miserably, when one suddenly realises that one has fallen for one's worst enemy.


	7. Chapter 7

Wizarding viagra

Thank Christ for Potions, Harry thought, taking his customary seat in the back of the classroom for Friday afternoon's class.

Harry had never expected to hear those words in his mind, but there you go. Extenuating circumstances and all that - after all, there was nothing as non-sexual as Professor Severus Snape, and after the day Harry had had, he needed the relief.

The morning had started well, he supposed. He had vowed not to think of Draco Malfoy all day, and in an effort to cheer himself up, Harry spent an extra half-hour in front of the mirror, tousling his hair and practicing a sexy pout. That is, it had cheered him up right up until the point that he had started to turn himself on, at which point it had just become odd. And a little frightening also.

Breakfast had been a tatty affair, hardly held together by exceptional food. Harry felt like his face was going to explode from the effort of holding an unconcerned smile in place, as student after student came up to him and asked him 'how it was going'.

Fucking bollocks, he had wanted to shout. That's how it's going! I'm on permanent fuck-alert, I'm lusting twenty-four-seven about the biggest prick in the school, I can't eat my breakfast without speculative looks that don't even have to do with people wanting to shag me, and I woke up alone this morning! How would you fucking be?!

He supposed it was the frustration that was making him so very violent and excitable. Privately he thought it was quite a good look for him.

Herbology had gone swimmingly, right up until the point they had started to deal with phallisium roots. Needless to say, the visual was not a necessary addition to his day. He was supposed to have had Divination after Herbology, but instead had hidden himself away in an empty Charms classroom, reading about Cunning Plans and plotting Draco Malfoy's death. He emerged from the room into a stream of Divination students who looked at him very askance, and told him that Trelawney had said that the position of the full moon in conjunction with the exposure of Uranus had meant that anyone with black hair and green eyes born on the thirty-first of July would most likely die within a week of either sexual frustration or auto-erotic asphyxiation, he couldn't remember which. She was becoming rather unsubtle, actually.

Harry was quite unable to cope with the idea of lunch after that.

Thus it was that he had come early to Potions, hoping to find a few moments to himself to gather his wayward impulses and relax a little.

No such hope, of course.

Draco Malfoy entered the room with his customary flair. The effect was only marginally lessened as he caught sight of Harry sitting in the back of the room and was so busy shooting him a smirk that he tripped over Neville's cauldron and fell into Professor Snape, who was also making a grand entrance. It was all rather hilarious and unfortunate, but Harry couldn't even raise a smile at the expression on Draco's face as Snape accidentally groped him in an attempt to prevent them both falling arse-over. He was too busy sulking.

Ron, running late, did not share Harry's lack of amusement as he entered the room just in time to see the whole production unfold, and corpsed against Hermione with hysterical laughter. Snape, who had by this time removed his hand from Draco's groin, noticed and was happy to dock ten points from Gryffindor for loitering, and another fifty for Ron having the most irritating laugh on the face of the planet.

Ascendency restored, Snape moved around Draco to the front of the class and shouted for order. The class fell silent.

"Today," Snape drawled in his flat, bitchy voice, "we will be covering something that should have been discussed in fifth year. I'm sure we all recall the reason why classes were somewhat...interrupted, during that period of time, therefore I will not dwell on it."

He shot a loathing-filled glare at Harry, who returned it serenely. Harry had managed to upend the entire school during his fifth year, running around after Voldemort who had been acting as a school nurse's assistant with the benefit of Polyjuice potion and a very revealing white uniform. Whilst everyone was smitten with the 'woman', Harry had seen right through 'her' (mostly because he was watching her so closely and hoping for a shag, mildly irritated that everyone thought she was prettier than he was), and slipped 'her' some mouse hair in 'her' potion. As it was, before Harry could catch Voldie, he had managed to escape into the kitchens and had not been heard from since. Harry half-suspected that he had been diced up and served in the Mystery Meat they had eaten for Christmas dinner. It had been quite gross.

Snape continued with an evil smirk in Harry's direction. "Aphrodisiac potions," he said simply, and waited for a reaction. He was not disappointed.

Harry went white. The entire class looked at him and then collapsed with laughter.

Snape affected not to notice and went on, "Properly used, they can be far more powerful than the Imperius curse, and, of course, far more enjoyable than a Hazen-hallucinogen potion. Please turn to page 69 of Most Potente Potions and retrieve your ingredients for the Shagmesidewaze potion, which is what we will be producing today."

Harry remained still as the class erupted in a flurry of movement. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Drop it did -- right on his head.

"Each of you will test your finished product as you finish brewing it. We will finish early, of course, because I really don't find the idea of horny teenagers necking in my classroom particularly appealing. It will take until tomorrow morning for the effects to wear off, but do not become complacent. I expect a full two parchment essay on Monday detailing the ingredients and effects of the Shagmesidewaze potion. 'I was too busy shagging' will not be considered a legitimate excuse."

"Any questions?" he continued maliciously.

Hermione raised her hand, looking bolshy.

Snape sneered at her. "A problem, Miss Granger? Surely you would want to produce this particular potion. I'd have thought you'd need all the help you can get," he said nastily.

The Slytherins sniggered.

Hermione subsided with a ferocious blush. Ron murmured soothingly to her as he turned the colour of eggplant and fingered his extremely sharp ingredient knife wistfully.

"Now, are there any real questions?"

Everyone looked at Harry.

Harry turned to his hardly touched copy of Most Potente Potions and thumbed through it nonchalantly.

"Get on with it then."

Snape sat at his desk and started grading third year papers on the dangers of using the Dreamless Sleep potion. 'No, you stupid prat' he wrote emphatically on one that claimed Dreamless Sleep's primary use was in keeping one awake during long nights of Potions study. Then, seeing it was a Slytherin, he erased his comment magically and replaced it with a tick. 'An interesting and original thought' he wrote with a smirk.

Snape risked a glance at Potter. The boy was slicing his salamander tongue with unusual violence. His hands were shaking. Snape grinned into his collar. Potter was right to be nervous. The Shagmesidewaze potion was the Wizarding equivalent of Muggle Viagra. Or, perhaps more accurately, an entire bottle of it in a single drop of the potion. Which was not quite the same thing.

Harry Potter was going to lose the bet tonight.

Snape fingered his quill complacently. He had heard from Trelawney this morning that the pool was up to fourteen thousand Galleons, and as far as he knew, no-one else's name was written down for today, although of course that would change when people heard about the aphrodisiac Harry had been forced to swallow. He congratulated himself on his cunning, and estimated that he should end up with about two or three thousand Galleons. He wondered idly how many times fourteen Galleons went into three thousand.

Oddly enough, fourteen Galleons was the exact price tag of magical vibrators down in Knockturn alley.

* * * *

Half an hour later, most students were adding the final ingredients to their vibrantly ice-blue potions.

Harry's had somehow turned out quite orange. Possibly because he'd deliberately added twice the quantity of wormwood essence that was required, and conveniently forgotten to add the powdered burdock entirely. He also congratulated himself on his cunning. Snape, being Snape, would force him to drink his botched potion regardless of the consequences. Harry was certain that whatever side-effects he might have to endure would be nothing to the agony of more arousal. I really am very clever, he thought smugly. Even I want to shag me.

He was grinning along with everyone else when Snape announced that they would be testing their potions in thirty seconds, ready or not.

Snape prowled the room, glancing in everyone's cauldrons, sniffing here and there, satisfying himself that no-one was going to die from drinking what they had concocted. Pausing in front of Harry's bubbling orange mess, Snape raised an eyebrow. Clever boy, he thought. But not clever enough. He continued on without a word, leaving Harry to breathe a premature sigh of relief.

Returning to the front of the class, Snape whirled to face the excited seventh years with a menacing expression.

"Please take your potion measure and extract one half cup from the cauldron immediately to your left," Snape said with a barely suppressed gleeful grin.

Harry looked left. And gulped. Hermione was sitting there beaming and looking impressed with herself for brewing the most perfect-looking Shagmesidewaze potion in existence. Snape was watching Harry like a hawk. As was most of the class, except for Ron who had turned green and was eyeing Harry's potion with an expression of terror from Harry's right.

Raising his eyes to heaven, asking if not for a break then for a lightning bolt to end his misery, Harry dipped his cup into Hermione's cauldron and drew out a half measure. A very small half measure. He looked around the class. Everyone was waiting for him to drink. Harry's eyes met Draco's over the rim of his cup. He inclined his head mockingly at his ex-nemesis-turned-lust-bunny and raised the cup to his lips.

Everyone held their breath.

Harry closed his eyes and swallowed his potion like a Firewhiskey shot.

It tasted like everything going pear-shaped.

* * * *

In the ensuing excitement, it took quite a while to notice that Ron, after drinking from Harry's cauldron, had fallen into a convulsive stupor and started frothing at the mouth.

Whisking him off to the infirmary, Harry was grateful to be told that his best friend was only suffering from a severe neurological dysfunction and would probably end up with brain damage.

It seemed tame in comparison to what Harry knew he was about to face.

The Shagmesidewaze potion would kick in in exactly twelve minutes. Which meant Harry had exactly twelve minutes to find some gaffa tape and a Really Good Hiding Place.

Leaving Ron in Madame Pomfrey's excellent care, Harry took himself off to the Gryffindor tower to pull the spare magical hand-cuffs and tape from his trunk, stowed under his bed in the dimly lit seventh year boy's dormitory. The cuffs had come in handy over the years, Harry thought fondly. They were the kind that could be undone by the user, but only with a spoken spell. Harry figured that if he taped up his mouth, he would be unable to speak, and therefore, once he was locked up securely, would be incapable of escaping his hiding place and of touching himself, even if the potion he had consumed made him horny enough to shag Albus Dumbledore. All in all, it was a Really Cunning Plan, he thought with much self-congratulation.

It didn't occur to him to wonder how he would actually escape from his self imposed prison once the effects of the aphrodisiac had worn off.

A moan from behind him alerted him to the presence of others in the room. He turned, swiftly tucking the cuffs and tape into his robes and opening his mouth to tell whomever it was to sod off.

Harry's eyes widened as he took in a shadowy, heaving, moaning shape collapse on Ron's bed. "Lumos," he said, pointing his wand at the monster, which was revealed to be Seamus Finnegan wrapped around Neville Longbottom in a most disturbing way.

"I never knew you were into boys, Neville," Harry said, remarkably un-shocked. This sort of thing had happened before.

One of the heads looked up, eyes unfocussed. "I'm not," Neville said, confused, as if that explained everything.

"Oh," said Harry. "That would explain why you're shagging Seamus."

Neville looked at Seamus and shrieked. "You said you were Hermione!" he said in a Very Affronted voice.

"What are you gonna do?" Seamus asked cheerfully.

"Absolutely nothing," Neville said without hesitation and attacked Seamus' mouth with his own. "Buggered if I know why."

"You will be, mate," Harry said with a sly grin and waved at the two of them indulgently. "Have fun guys."

A muffled 'mmphff' was all the answer he got.

Harry took his 'precautions' downstairs, planning to make a quick getaway before the rest of his housemates came home. He could feel the potion starting to pound in his veins; his loins felt heavy and throbbing and his head was starting to stop working. The earlier scene with Harry's dorm mates had had rather...er, disturbing effects on a particular part of his anatomy that shall remain nameless. Harry didn't want to meet anyone who might offer to fix the problem. He wasn't sure he'd be able to say no.

Alas, as he cautiously poked his head around the door to check that the common room was clear, he was accosted by shocking scenes of absolute debauchery that might have terrified a lesser man.

Someone had turned on the music, a slow, throbbing beat that pulsed into Harry's brain. Sex...Sex...Sex...Sex. Couples were dancing around the common-room...well dancing was too strong a word really, it was rather a lot more like a pelvic gyration competition with the respective halves of each couple trying to asphyxiate their partner with their tongue. Harry stared, open-mouthed.

Hermione was snogging someone on an armchair who most definitely did not have red hair; her skirt was around her waist and her blouse unbuttoned and she was moaning like a dying woman. Harry was shocked to find himself instantly aroused. By Hermione! Ew-w-w-w...thought Harry, even as his traitorous body betrayed him.

Hoping to find relief, Harry looked elsewhere. Dean Thomas and Parvati Patil were glued together on the rug by the fire. Her hands were down his pants, his on her arse. Harry whimpered.

Over in another corner, a faceless boy had his head in the lap of a girl that was most likely Lavender Brown. Maybe he was just sleeping, Harry thought hopefully. Lavender let out an almighty shriek of ecstasy which put that thought to death.

Harry closed his eyes and tried not to think about the ache in his groin. Hard to do, really, when one finds one's brain has actually relocated to that area.

He opened his eyes and looked dumbly from couple to couple to threesome to couple. There were a few faces he didn't recognise, even a few Slytherins among the thrashing, pulsing mob of aroused humanity. He smiled grimly. Nothing like mindless sex to improve inter-house relations. He suddenly had an image of a certain blonde Slytherin he'd love to...er, inter-relate with in a very non-PC way, and shook his head fiercely.

He needed to get the hell out of there.

Running through the room with a burst of speed that would've put most racehorses to shame, Harry beat an undignified exit through the portrait hole and skidded into the corridor beyond.

He didn't stop running until he reached the fifth floor reading room. When he saw who occupied his Really Clever Hiding Place, he stopped in his tracks, violently cursing God and also useless authors who rely on serendipity to make their plots work.

God, and an unamused author were listening. Momentum caught up with Harry, and he found himself sprawling inelegantly onto the stone floor.

Draco Malfoy nearly fell off his armchair laughing.

Oh, this was going to end badly.

* * * *

"Potter," Draco drawled, disdain dripping from his voice. "Absolutely smashing to see you again. Why is it, d'you think, that whenever we meet, at least one of us falls over?"

"Mmphfin fmuphf mophff," Harry said, his face remaining where it was smashed against the floor.

"Missed that," Draco said, amused. "Care to translate for those of us who didn't take 'Muffled Cursing 1.01' as a second language?"

Harry lifted his head and eyed Malfoy mutinously. He was remarkably unscathed for someone who had hit the equivalent of a brick wall at about fifty miles an hour.

"I said," Harry winced, lifting himself from the floor gracefully, "fuck you Malfoy, you unspeakable great git. I hate you completely and utterly, and I am sick of inadvertently running into you around every corner I fucking turn. You are the absolute last person I need to see right now, so why don't you fuck off and find someone else who is less horny, and more patient, to fucking irritate!" He had a bit of a tantrum, actually. Complete with foot-stamp and head-toss. It was quite dramatic.

Draco smirked. "Goodness...all that, in three little muffled syllables? Rather expansive language, this Muffled Cursing. Must remember to learn it when I get a chance. Probably only take me an hour." His face didn't show the hurt.

Harry looked at him in disbelief. "I am trying to shatter your illusions here, Malfoy. You are making it awfully difficult."

"Sorry," Draco said with utmost sincerity. His eyes lingered on Harry's face, gloating over the perfect bone structure and the angry flush that stained his cheekbones. His eyes drifted lower, and lower. He found himself hardening with every inch of Harry's body they covered. The potion had started taking effect fifteen minutes ago. Draco had sought this room as his house-mates had started disappearing to their various dorms. He found the idea of another Pansy-incident, as he had taken to calling it, extremely distasteful.

But of course, then Harry had to show up. Bloody Harry Potter with his amazing eyes and fucking Greek God body, who hadn't strayed even once from Draco's thoughts these last few days. Harry had been avoiding him, Draco knew, but he couldn't decide if this made him mad or made him depressed. He missed Harry when he wasn't there.

Bloody fucking Nora, Draco thought viciously. If I'd known that not only were I going to fall for Harry, but also be both ignored by him and having him haunting my thoughts as well, I'd've never started this whole bollocks bet malarkey. Hindsight is a crying bastard.

Draco didn't want to want Harry this much. He just couldn't help it. His eyes strayed lower, and rested on Harry's groin.

Harry, thinking of a certain incident in the shower, which had started in a very similar fashion and ended very badly, decided that now was a very fine time to leave.

"Leaving so soon, Potter?" Malfoy said, a trace of bitterness in his voice. Bastard Potter, showing up, turning him on, and leaving again. It was becoming irritating.

"I suddenly find the company not to my taste," Harry said dismissively, the ache in his loins telling him otherwise.

"How do you know?" Draco asked suggestively. "I might just be better than Baked Alaska, Potter."

"I doubt it," Harry said, unexpectedly adding, "it's a well known fact that you taste of soap and bean-sprouts."

"Who said that?" Draco roared, leaping to his feet and looking furious, momentarily affronted right out of seduction mode.

Harry grinned. "No-one, but it was worth the image in my head just to hear you freak out like that." He found himself laughing despite the horrendous arousal and his aching face.

Draco reluctantly joined him.

"Only one way to find out if it's true, Potter," Draco invited, eyes raking Harry up and down. He grew a little feverish at the thought, amplified by the Shagmesidewaze potion that had taken a firm hold in his blood. His face flushed appealingly as the visual image of Phantom Potter 'finding out' hit him full force. Really, what a time for the cheeky bugger to stage a reunion tour.

Harry closed his eyes and whimpered. He had a very similar image of himself doing unspeakably wicked things to a writhing, naked Draco in his head, and he was finding it nearly impossible to evict. Bloody Malfoy, making Harry want him like this. Bloody Malfoy only wanting Harry because he was trying to make him lose a stupid bet that all of a sudden didn't matter anymore.

Bloody Malfoy, making Harry fall for him when he couldn't give a flying fuck about Harry at all.

Bloody Malfoy.

Harry turned without a word and walked away. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. He waited until he was around the corner, and then started running blindly, gasping for breath, feet pounding against stone, taking entire staircases in two great bounds. He had no bloody idea where he was going, only that it was away. Away from him. Anywhere but where he was. Because he was making Harry forget everything bad that had ever passed between them, and making Harry want so much more than it had ever been. And that was not all right at all.

* * * *

Draco followed Harry at a slightly more sedate pace. He was extremely Put Out, and pouting mightily. He had had many reactions in his life when he asked people to...er, do that to him, but Potter's was by far the most insulting. Really, who just leaves when a gorgeous blonde seeker offers them mind-blowing sex? Draco thought indignantly.

Stupid, unbelievably attractive bastards who run around Hogwarts in the evening with equal disregard for decorum and direction, Draco thought miserably. That's who.

* * * *

It was quite a few staircases later that Harry decided he had had enough of running, and should probably stop and hide or something. He pounded to a screeching halt and looked around him, trying to figure out where he was.

His heart sank when he realised he was about three doors down from the Slytherin common room portrait hole. A sense of doom invaded him. Oh, this was not going to be pretty. Perhaps Draco had not followed, Harry thought optimistically, and he could just sneak off...

Harry heard footsteps behind him and turned to face his blonde pursuer with a wince that was hardly theatrical at all.

"Glad to see you were so eager to get to my dorm, Harry," Draco attempted to drawl, but failed miserably because he was panting. It was quite a long run from the fifth floor to the Slytherin dungeon, and he reckoned they had made it in record time.

Harry was silent.

His way was blocked. The Slytherin corridor was a dead end. Draco was standing in the middle of the entrance-way, braced for attack.

Harry, desperate and wild-eyed, like a rabbit in the headlights of a road-train named desire, stood still for a second and then ran straight at Draco, whose eyes widened in surprise.

"Potter, what the..." Draco got no further as Potter ploughed into him, fists flying. He was not sure how it happened, but somehow Potter had managed to hit him in the heart. Or at least that's how it felt. Possibly it was just several broken ribs. Draco, ever temperamental, swung a punch at Harry and hit him square in the jaw, sending the other boy sprawling into a wall. Harry slumped to the bonelessly to the ground.

He lay very still.

Draco was faced with the very real possibility that he had perhaps killed the boy he was in love with. It was not a very nice feeling.

"Harry?" he asked tentatively, reluctant to approach the corpse (for he was sure that was what it was).

Harry didn't move.

"Oh for fucking bollocks sake!" Draco exploded temperamentally.

* * * *

Harry was dreaming. It was quite a nice dream all told. He and Draco were in a very charming meadow, surrounded by flowers and shagging each other's brains out. It was all very innocent and lovely, with the birds singing, the insects humming, the flowers blooming, and two very horny teenage boys going at it like they had less than an hour to live. Perhaps they had, Harry thought hazily. He certainly felt like he was about to die.

Possibly it was just because he was actually about to come quite explosively.

"Draco," Harry groaned in agony. "Please."

Phantom Draco wound his hands around Harry's neck and kissed him wildly, using his tongue seductively against Harry's with the parry and thrust of a master swordsman. And speaking of thrust, he did so again, rocking Harry's world around him and making Harry cry out once more.

And then - oh, oh, oh, oH, oH, OH, HOLY-MOTHER-OF-GOD - and it was all over.

Harry was going to need a cigarette.

* * * *

Harry came awake to find himself surrounded by green and silver, gasping for breath, and feeling like a great shroud had been lifted from his body - as well as his clothes. He found he could suddenly think clearly again. It was wonderful. Except that his face hurt quite a lot.

Harry rolled to his left and started as he saw Draco Malfoy lying beside him, looking relieved, and also somewhat satisfied.

Harry looked at Draco through narrowed eyes. Funny how all of a sudden, he could stare at his ex-nemesis and not want to die of arousal. It was quite surprisingly nice, he thought. Harry stood unselfconsciously and regarded Malfoy down his nose.

"I am no longer subject to your wicked wiles, Draco Malfoy. I have broken through the barrier of the physical and come to transcend all that is mortal. I am invincible," Harry crowed triumphantly.

"Only because you've just come all over my silk sheets, Potter, you absolute dick," Draco replied with a half-indulgent grin. Poor sheets. Second time they'd been violated like this in a week, he thought fretfully, remembering again the, erm, 'Pansy incident'.

Harry looked down and was forced to reluctantly agree.

"We didn't...?" he asked in panic.

Draco toyed with the idea of saying 'yes, we did'. The stupid berk would probably cry, hand over a thousand Galleons and run off to shag the nearest person that wasn't named Draco Malfoy. Draco suppressed a laugh when he remembered that Crabbe was snogging Goyle somewhere in the corridor outside his room. Perhaps the second, or third person he saw then.

But then Draco caught the absolute terror on Harry's face, and he relented.

"No, you idiot, we didn't. I've never been into necrophilia and I wasn't actually sure you weren't dead, so I decided to keep my filthy, wicked Slytherin hands to myself," Draco said mockingly.

"You did say some very interesting things whilst you were comatose, though," Draco continued with a smirk, the memory of Harry moaning Draco's name fresh in his mind. It had almost been worth the effort of dragging Harry's surprisingly heavy body all the way through the Slytherin common room and into his dorm.

Harry looked suddenly boot-faced. "What? What did I say...?" he asked nervously, obviously remembering.

"Oh, nothing of great importance," Draco said airily. "You must have been having quite nice dreams..." He trailed off and looked significantly at the conspicuous wet spot where Harry had been lying.

"There was nothing in the bet that said I wasn't allowed to lose my load," Harry said sulkily. "Just that I couldn't deliberately cause it to occur."

Draco thought about that and miserably concurred, he hadn't specified that particular clause. Dammit.

For the first time, Harry looked around his surroundings and became distracted. "What in the hell am I doing here?" he asked suspiciously.

"In my room?" Draco questioned blithely.

"This is your room?" Harry squeaked in panic. Really, Draco thought. For a sex god, he was surprisingly insecure in new sex-related environments. Shouldn't he be eyeing the exits and potential sites for securing bondage equipment?

"Relax, Potter, really there's no need to have a very unflattering seizure," Draco said, amused. "We fought a little, and you hit your head. I didn't want anyone thinking I'd killed you, so I brought you here to sleep off your concussion."

"And I'm naked because...?" Harry questioned, expecting a logical explanation.

"Erm, well..." Draco stalled. How did one explain that it had actually seemed like a good idea at the time to remove all the clothes from one's worst enemy in one's bedroom in order to check for injuries? Or something like that...in fact, it felt quite a lot more like checking for assets, but did Potter really need to know that?

"Wait on, you took off my clothes?!" Harry yelped. He suddenly turned amused. "That's a bit pervy, really. Even for you, Malfoy..."

"Actually," Draco smirked and lied, "ihey were torn from your helpless, comatose body by a large, horny bunch of seventh-year Slytherin girls who decided that it was high time you were shagged...I was quite unable to stop them."

Harry looked dubious. "And my robes came to be on your floor how, exactly?"

Draco changed the subject. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I used my face to stop Goyle on his way to the dinner table," Harry said irritably. He thought for a moment. "You hit me, didn't you?"

"You were quite hysterical, Potter," Draco said defensively. "You were trying to utilise my unwilling body for a boxing bag."

"You really are a fucking bastard, Malfoy," Harry said resignedly. "I hate you quite a lot, you know."

"I notice, though, for all your pretty protestations, Potter," Draco drawled, equally stung and impressed with himself for getting out all those 'p' sounds without stuttering, "That you haven't left yet. And you are remarkably...er...chipper, for someone who has just come all over the very expensively-clad bed of someone you supposedly despise." Draco gestured at Harry's unabated erection. Apparently the Shagmesidewaze potion had not worn off.

"So are you," Harry pointed out reasonably, taking a good look at Draco, who had tossed his robes aside and was clad in a rather tight pair of designer jeans that left little to the imagination. It was beginning to dawn on Harry that he had rather more of an effect on his nemesis that he had previously thought, and stored that interesting little bit of information for future reference. Cunning Plan here we come, Harry thought maliciously. This could be fun.

Draco wasn't privvy to this little bit of mental byplay, and instead blushed when he realised Harry had an exceptionally good point. "And...?" he asked pointedly, making no move to shield himself from Potter's view.

"And what?" Harry asked in confusion, trying to keep his eyes off the rather interesting sight.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I suppose I had best rectify the entire situation immediately," Harry said with a feral grin and advanced upon Draco. Draco retreated back against the headboard and flushed with surprise - was Harry going to do what Draco thought Harry was going to do? This basically equated to pushing Draco up against the nearest wall as soon as possible and having his incomparably wicked way with him...? Was he really going to deliberately give up the bet? Just to have Draco?

No, Harry was not.

Laughing at the suddenly hopeful expression on Draco's handsome features, Harry detoured toward his clothes and picked them up, tossing on his robes, casting a carefully aimed flaccidus hex and turning to the door. He noted the barely audible dispirited moan from the blonde who was sprawled disappointedly across the bed.

Harry turned back for a second, and had to close his eyes momentarily against the temptation to join Draco on the bed and shag him absolutely senseless.

Regaining his equilibrium, Harry felt compelled to make a Really Nasty Comment. He supposed Draco must be rubbing off on him. Er...figuratively, of course.

"Hey Draco," Harry said with a forced chuckle. "Better take care of that..."

"Fuck you, Potter. If you can't come up with anything original, don't say anything at all," Draco ground out, unimpressed to have the tables suddenly turned.

"I meant the bed," Harry laughed. "I hear that silk stains horribly." He exited with a sexy swagger that made Draco groan in agony.

Draco forgot he was a Malfoy that night.

After all, real Malfoys don't shag their own hands thinking about other boys. For three hours straight. Really, you'd think once would be enough.

* * * *

Harry was completely unruffled by the whole affair.

In fact, he was so unconcerned that he spent the entire weekend locked in a broom closet with six Potions books and a stack of blank parchment, writing an essay he couldn't actually see. Broom closets are quite dim, really, when one seals the door with about sixty wards and a lot of Gaffa tape.

He didn't think about Draco at all.

* * * *

Draco and Harry were not the only ones who didn't sleep much on Friday night. Severus Snape was so excited about the possibility of riches that he also, temporarily, became an insomniac. He was waiting for the alarm to go off, indicating to the whole school that Potter had been unable to keep it in his pants. Snape smiled triumphantly. Bloody Potter, he thought vindictively. Just like his father - completely without a semblance of dignity or self control.

Snape was still bitter that James Potter had rejected him during their school years. How was Snape to know that James was heterosexual? I mean, he had actually worn leather trousers one day. It was an honest mistake! But those trousers...oo-er, Snape thought, fanning himself with PlayWizard and losing himself in the memories...

He waited. And waited. Goodness, this latest issue of PlayWizard really wasn't cutting it in terms of usual entertainment value... And waited. And waited. There were exactly six hundred and eighty eight bricks on the east wall of his bedroom.... And waited. And waited. And waited. Oh, look, there was a strange cat outside his window...And waited...

It was quite a long wait.

When the clock struck midnight and Snape's day was over, he went slightly apeshit. Two hundred Galleons wasted just because that imbecile Potter had been unable to manage to find a willing partner. Bloody, bloody Harry Potter.

Snape was highly unimpressed, and subsided into a mighty sulk that lasted the entire weekend.

* * * *

Snape was even less impressed when an overtly cheerful Harry, wearing a surprisingly sexy, and also hideous, gold and red patterned shirt, sauntered lazily into Monday morning Potions with a neatly written, four-parchment essay on not only the Shagmesidewaze potion, but on the effective ingredients and uses of all the Aphrodisiac potions.

Snape looked shocked and took ten points from Gryffindor for Harry's shirt.

It was only later that night, when he was pretending to grade Harry's paper, when he realised that every third sentence read:

"I am NOT in love with Draco Malfoy..."

 

Denial, much?


	8. Chapter 8

Detention

Professor Minerva McGonagall sat primly in the teachers' section of the Quidditch stands, wringing her hands and watching the sky with something akin to trepidation.

Despite the result of the previous match, Slytherin and Gryffindor were still the two top teams on the ladder, and as a result, were playing one another in this evening's final, undertaken, as according with tradition, on a Monday night rather than a Saturday morning.

However, neither team seemed to know or care about the day or the time. In the air, it was, as always, an absolute blood bath.

Gryffindor was twenty points down, and McGonagall was getting ready to throttle Keeper Ron Weasley, who had just let in two goals which could have been easily blocked because he was staring down at the stands where Hermione Granger was dancing about, waving her scarf like a cheerleader and wearing a skirt that was hardly there at all. Evidently, her poor boyfriend was quite unable to cope. Of course, Ron's poor performance could have had something to do with the fact that he had only been released from the hospital wing this morning, following his consumption of Harry's botched Shagmesidewaze potion the previous Friday. According to Poppy Pomfrey, it had been touch and go for a moment there. Watching the red-haired git ponce about in the air in a most useless manner, Minerva thought bitterly, she'd much rather it had been 'go'.

Beside the brooding Minerva sat a smouldering Professor Snape, who was murmuring under his breath with every play. As Harry Potter deftly dodged a Bludger and kicked the Quaffle out of the hands of a Slytherin Chaser into the arms of a hovering Ginny Weasley, all the while looking absolutely cool and suave; still keeping enough time in reserve to watch for the Snitch and shoot a megawatt smile at his legions of fans, who wilted, Snape said something that sounded a lot like 'clucking little brass-pole'. Minerva shuddered to speculate.

"Really, Severus," she intoned severely, "you do get so involved in these games."

Snape shot her a venomous look. "Don't think I didn't hear what you called Malfoy just now when he took out that Creevy boy, Minerva," he said snidely, making McGonagall flush.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said airily, and turned her eyes back up to the sky.

"Perhaps," Snape went on bitchily, "you're nervous about the outcome of today's match. Slytherin is ahead, after all, and Potter has been decidedly off the past few days - "

"Harry Potter is not the only player on the Gryffindor team, Severus," McGonagall said.

Snape scoffed.

"And furthermore, Mr Potter is playing well up to his usual standard," she continued, watching the scarlet blur in question as he pulled out from a spectacular feint that had tricked Malfoy into following him within inches of the ground. Malfoy was not so lucky and put his face in the dirt, much to the dismay of the Slytherin supporters. They gave him a cheer as he pulled himself up and re-mounted his broom, zooming up to join Potter in the air, only to find him malevolently laughing his arse off.

Snape glared. He was still sore about his wasted galleons. And still wondering with enormous, if covert, interest about the little insert that had been repeatedly, and, Snape thought, most likely accidentally, included in Potter's last essay. Did Potter really fancy Malfoy? As in Draco Malfoy? To what extremes of delusion was Harry being driven by this bet? thought Snape musingly. He almost felt sorry for the poor git. Then Harry nearly kicked Draco's broom out from under him, and Snape experienced instantaneous reversal of emotion. "Little prat....just like his father....showing off like that...horrid git..." he muttered vindictively.

Minerva affected not to notice. "I assume you are unhappy with the outcome of your recent foray into the underground student gambling ring that has been established at Hogwarts?" she asked with amusement.

Snape grunted noncommittally.

"I have, of course, turned a blind eye to the fact that you deliberately went out of your way to force feed Mr Potter an aphrodisiac potion in pursuit of your own financial gain," she continued blithely, pretending not to notice the ugly flush that branded the normally sallow Potion master's cheekbones.

"You seem awfully cheerful about my failure, Minerva," Snape growled. "A vested interest, perhaps? I don't remember seeing your name down on the list, but there were an awful lot of 'anon' entries, any of which could have been you."

"Really, Severus. Do I look like the kind of person who would become involved in such nonsense?"

Snape smirked. "Yes," he said, watching her carefully.

Minerva McGonagall just smiled serenely, and returned her eyes to the drama in the sky.

* * * *

Harry and Draco circled each other in the air like tiger sharks (funny, human-looking, flying ones), just waiting for a sign of weakness before plunging into attack. They glared at each other, trading vicious shoves and even the odd punch whenever they got close enough to do so. Harry was bleeding from a Bludger hit to his shoulder, Draco from a nasty-looking gash in his cheek, and both boys were hollow-eyed and fierce, watching one another with barely repressed savagery. Tension came off them in waves of electricity; an elemental, feral sort of violence that cracked between and around them like a stockwhip. There was no foolish, laughing banter or seduction between them today. There was nothing but blind hatred and even blinder desire; pride and longing and vicious, brawling lust.

They pretended they were playing Quidditch. Every so often, one or both of them would make a quick token search for the Snitch, or a half-hearted feint. But always they would come back to each other's fiery, intent gaze, not certain what they were looking for, but finding it there anyway.

Suddenly, Harry saw the Snitch hovering near the Slytherin goal and exploded into motion, brushing by Draco as if he were a stuffed animal of some sort and looping toward the glittering golden prize with undaunted focus. He was dimly aware that Draco was close upon his broom-tail, and stretched out low against the stick, driving his Firebolt to greater speed. Still Draco gained, better broom-power speaking for itself as he inched up on Harry slowly, but steadily. Both reached straining hands to the Snitch as it hovered mischievously near a goal hoop. Draco put on a last burst of speed and closed with Harry at the last second.

Their fingers closed around the golden ball in unison, and they slowed, both holding the Snitch tightly, both thinking for an instant that they'd won it. Stopping, they stared at each other for a second, wide eyed, and then Draco's narrowed and he tried to pull the Snitch toward him, viciously yanking Harry and nearly pulling the other boy from his broom. Harry hung on and hauled back, and then it was on for young and old, with punches and insults being thrown about madly as they traded shove for yank, push for pull. It was quite violent.

Draco gave one last ferocious yank on the Snitch, but instead of resisting, Harry went forward with him. With a horrible shift in gravity Draco felt his momentum catch up with him and he slid off one side of his broom.

"Harry," he whispered, fingers slipping from the Snitch to grasp blindly for Harry's robes and missing by a scant half-inch. Harry, still off balance from the shove, whipped a hand out to him but it was too late. With wide eyes, Draco was suddenly falling in a long, agonising, bizarrely graceful arc, thirty feet straight down. Damn you, gravity, he thought irrelevantly, and almost laughed at the sheer idiocy of it. He wasn't laughing moments later when his progress was abruptly halted by collision with the unforgiving surface of the pitch. It hurt, so he passed out.

He didn't get up.

Oh fuck, Harry thought as he fought to regain his balance, his face absolutely white.

"Draco?" he whimpered, zooming down to the ground where his ex-nemesis lay twisted into a terrible parody of normal, one leg obviously broken, one shoulder absolutely dislocated, and one side of his ribcage definitely staved in. He looked like a fallen angel who had missed the ground and landed in hell. Oops, right?

Harry fell to his knees and stared at the other boy, holding his broomstick awkwardly against his side, oblivious to the chaos that had overcome the stands and the pitch. Draco lay very still. Harry reached out a tentative hand and felt Draco's chest, and the relief he felt when he found it rising and falling slowly was absolute. Agonising. He wondered idly if he was going to cry. It seemed an odd sort of thing to do, really, but still his eyes stung. God, if Draco died...

Suddenly Harry felt rough hands seize him and attempt to drag him away.

"No!" he shouted, fighting for freedom like a trapped lion. "No! I won't let him die! I won't let you take him!" He was absolutely hysterical. He looked around wildly, seeing a blur of concerned and angry faces and red and green and silver and gold, all clashing chaotic hues that seemed to shimmer through the tear-haze as he fought to get back to Draco's side because suddenly that was all that really mattered.

"Jesus he's strong," the Slytherin keeper muttered to his looming team-mates, hanging onto a furiously struggling Harry by the tips of his fingernails. "Help me out here you prats! He's fucking unstable!"

Then there were more hands and they were dragging him backwards and away and the last he saw of the boy he loved was the tousled blonde hair before the teeming green and silver of Draco's house-mates hid his slumped form from view.

* * * *

Draco awakened blearily, blinking like an owl in the dim, pre-dawn light. He was very hot, and attempted to kick his heavy blankets away, but this made such intense spasms of agony shoot up his right leg that he stopped immediately. He tried to sit up, but this caused some sort of knife to twist into the region of his tenth rib, as well as a sympathetic, excruciating twang of pain in his left shoulder and arm. He gritted his teeth, but all this accomplished was a sting in the muscles of his jaw and neck. So he rolled his eyes skyward, which hurt his eye sockets, and subsided with a small sigh, which was similarly agonising.

Suffice it to say that Draco was in quite a bit of pain.

He managed a small groan without too much trouble, and was surprised when Harry Potter's face popped up from the ground somewhere and appeared at his bedside, wearing a worried expression and looking for all the world like a sleep-tousled, wide eyed, dark-haired Florence Nightingale, only prettier.

Draco decided he could cope with that view every morning.

"Where am I?" he whispered in confusion.

"The infirmary," Harry replied, watching Draco with concern. Harry really had no idea what he was doing here. At Draco Malfoy's bedside. Where he had been all night, unbeknownst to the hospital staff, sleeping on the cold stone floor with his head pillowed on his scrunched up Invisibility Cloak and keeping one eye open to make sure his supposed worst enemy didn't die during the night. It was very....odd. Made particularly so by the rather...er, interesting things that Draco had whispered and groaned in his delirium, and again later in his sleep. The words 'Harry', 'yes' and 'oh, right there' had come up rather a lot more than Harry suspected was usual, and he stored this information away in his mind with a slight smirk.

"I don't need to ask why I'm here," Draco murmured painfully, pulling Harry out of a pleasant reverie. "Judging by the way I feel, I imagine I was run over repeatedly by the Hogwarts Express, and then savaged by a rampaging band of rabid Hinkypuffs. I'm only surprised the staff bothered to salvage my wrecked and ravaged corpse."

Harry managed a laugh.

"But I am wondering why you're here," Draco continued sleepily. "I mean, if this is one of those fantasies where you and I...well, you know, and I wake up beside you, surely the infirmary is a rather kinky location choice? And the sado-masochistic self-pain induction thing is a new development. I'm not sure I'm enjoying it so much. I think my tibia has relocated to somewhere in my thorax and it's quite agonising, actually."

Harry grinned. Trust Draco Malfoy to be cracking jokes when it had been less than twelve hours since he had used his face to break a thirty-foot fall into the ground, and in so doing fractured pretty much every bone they had a name for.

"D'you...well, that is...d'you remember anything that happened?" Harry asked tentatively, pitching his voice low so as not to alert the hospital staff of his presence. In truth, he had not meant to stay all night. When he had snuck in the previous evening, he had consoled himself that he would just stay a few minutes to ensure that Malfoy wasn't going to snuff it, and then leave. But Draco had looked so young and lost and vulnerable in his poky little hospital bed, his face paler than the cream-coloured sheets and his body twisted awkwardly amidst the bedclothes, that Harry had been quite unable to tear himself away.

Draco furrowed his brow, and then hurriedly desisted as it hurt too much. He tried to think, but that was similarly excruciating, so he decided to just not do anything until someone saw fit to come and put an end to his agony.

"Why am I not anaesthetised?" Draco asked plaintively. "I'm in pain here. Some bollocks fantasy this is...no sex, agonising pain and no sodding drugs. I want out."

"Shush," Harry said with a smile. "Don't whinge, it's unbecoming."

Draco sulked and replied with something that sounded a lot like 'fur-cough'.

"Why are you here, you git?" he then asked with a pout that was adorable and made him look about twelve.

"I was worried..." Harry started, unsure whether or not to tell Draco about the accident and his own causal role, in case it precipitated some kind of psychotic episode or coronary failure.

"Don't know why. You hate me," Draco sulked.

Harry didn't know what to say to that, so Draco took advantage of his silence to start thinking again. He found it didn't hurt as much this time. He wondered why he was really here, and then, all of a sudden, it all rushed back upon him like a crashing wave of reality upon his ravaged mind and body - the match, the screaming crowd, chasing the Snitch, and then...then Harry, the air and the ground in remarkably quick succession. He winced. And then scowled furiously.

"I can't believe you have the fucking nerve to be in here after what you did to me yesterday, Potter," he spat hissily, debating whether or not it was worth the probable agony to attempt to lift his hands and strangle his nemesis.

Harry looked surprised at the sudden turnabout, and then shamefaced.

"Come to see the results of your handiwork?" Draco continued in a thorough strop. "Wouldn't put it past you, you fucking sadistic prat. I'm surprised you didn't bring all your Gryffindor thugs, make a real sodding party out of it. 'Hey look at Malfoy, he's living proof that a functioning skeleton really isn't required for survival...' Maybe you should go get them. I mean, where's the fun in taking the mickey out of an injured guy when there's only one of you to appreciate your non-existent Gryffindor wit?"

"Draco, would you shut up for a second?" Harry hissed.

Draco subsided with a pout.

"I'm here," Harry said patiently, "because I felt bad about what happened, and I wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Evidently I am not okay, you blind, moronic, useless fucking idiot. However, odds are two to one that I will survive, so you can take your fucking pity elsewhere, wonder-boy, because I neither need nor want it."

Harry stared at him.

"You're still here," Draco stated with a dramatic sigh, as if he couldn't understand why Harry refused to acquiesce to his demands. "Isn't it bad enough that you got the Snitch and managed to send me to the hospital with several fractured body parts and a probable internal haemorrhage? D'you really find it necessary to gloat? I thought you were supposed to be noble."

"I am noble," Harry said defensively.

"Well, do the gentlemanly thing then, Potter, and fuck the hell off," Draco shouted, bringing sounds of alarm from the hospital staff common room.

Harry deliberated for a second, but the sounds of advancing teachers and nurses set his feet in motion. "If that's how you want it, then fine," he spat dramatically, swirling his cloak about him and turning with a theatrical flourish before flouncing out the infirmary door.

Sodding ungrateful prat, Harry thought grumpily as he made his way back to the Gryffindor dorms.

Sodding gloating prat, Draco thought as Madame Pomfrey clucked and fussed around him like a mother hen, and then made him swallow something that tasted like rat piss mixed with lighter fluid.

It was only after he was left alone fifteen minutes later that Draco began to wonder just how long Harry had been by his bedside.

Draco had, after all, been known to talk in his sleep.

* * * *

It was basically all-out warfare once Draco finally got out of the infirmary.

Draco, still angry about the Quidditch fiasco and limping ostentatiously, found himself hating and loving Harry in equal measure. Harry, still pissy about the way Draco had reacted to the Quidditch fiasco, unfortunately couldn't help being far more in love with Draco than in hate, although if one were to judge by his actions, one might not have figured that out. I suppose nothing says 'I love you' like a hybrid furnunculus-petrificus hex thrown at you during breakfast.

Hexes and curses of the non-magical variety flew between and around them like little darting arrows of tension. They really smouldered at each other in every class they shared, spending hours at a time locked in a mutual glare of hate and want and anger and lust and agony. They never lost an opportunity to shove, punch or otherwise physically injure one another, at one point having to be separated by Ron, which was really saying something. Needless to say, the poor red-headed git ended up in the infirmary on that particular occasion. It was really quite tense and stressful.

All the angst came to a head in McGonagall's NEWT-level advanced Transfiguration. As the rest of the class was immersed in morphing various body parts into inanimate weapons, Draco 'accidentally' turned Potter's left arm into a purple sparkly three-fingered vibrator, and Harry 'accidentally' turned Draco's head into a pretty flowered vase.

McGonagall reacted predictably.

"You two come here!" she shouted amidst the laughter of their classmates, and they scurried to obey. Draco had more than a little navigational difficulty due to the fact that, as a vase, he now had slightly less visual acuity.

They stood in front of her desk sullenly, shooting each other malicious looks. Well, Harry shot Draco malicious looks, Draco just stood there simmering in a very vase-like manner.

McGonagall glared at them, and then waved her wand and returned their body parts to normal.

"What is the meaning of this?" she asked loudly, her wand jumping about in a vaguely disturbing manner.

Harry and Draco erm'd for a good minute before McGonagall lost her patience.

"Well?!" she shouted.

Harry spoke up. "It was an accident Professor," he said suavely, giving McGonagall his trademark debonair grin. Draco rolled his eyes and groaned. Harry shot him a filthy look.

McGonagall raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, Professor. It was completely an accident that Potter's arm turned into a sex toy. What I meant to do was turn it into a bicycle, to remind our dear Mr. Potter what happens to people who allow everyone a ride. Alas, my transfiguration skills were simply inadequate to the task," Draco said with an absolute straight face.

"And I was only trying to return Draco's head to its appropriate size, but its astounding swollenness defeated me." Harry drooped his own head in pretended dismay, hiding his grin.

"I'm very sorry about the whole thing," Draco said with a smirk.

"Yes, and I'm very sorry about Malfoy's stupid face. Still, one cannot right all the world's wrongs in one try," Harry said, looking earnest.

McGonagall lost her temper. "That is quite enough. You will both serve detention tomorrow night. I had thought that you two had put the worst of your animosity behind you. You are, after all, seventh years now. I expected better. I am most seriously disappointed in the both of you. Now go away and resume your seats, and if I hear another peep out of either of you, I will not hesitate to transfigure the both of you into Bludgers for the next Quidditch match - I assure you, after being hit about for several hours by the Hufflepuff Beaters, you will be regretting your transgressions."

"Yes, Professor," Harry and Draco said in unison, and then with much death-glaring, they returned to their seats.

"Git," Harry spat under his breath at the blonde across the aisle. 

"Wanker," Draco returned with great maturity in a vicious whisper.

"Not lately," Harry murmured with a smirk.

"Not interested," Draco lied.

"Prat," Harry growled.

"Prick."

"Twat."

"Arse."

"Bitch," Harry finally hissed with a smug smile.

Draco looked astonished, and then burst into laughter.

"Draco Malfoy!" McGonagall shouted. "That's it! You will see me after class!"

Draco shot Harry a venomous glance, only to find Potter gazing at him with an intense sort of loathing-filled expression on his handsome features.

Draco returned his eyes to the front of the room.

Didn't want Potter seeing the hurt.

* * * *

"You have got to be joking," Harry groaned under his breath, his eyes wide with astonishment and fear.

"No Mr Potter, I assure you I am extremely serious," McGonagall replied with a small smile. "Your recent immaturity warrants this kind of punishment."

"With toothbrushes? I mean, it's a little Marine-Corps-slash-penal-colony-cruel-and-unusual, isn't it?" Draco chimed in, determined to put up just as much of a show as Potter, although secretly, he was nothing but amused.

"I really don't think anything less would make a sufficient impression upon either of you," McGonagall said with another little smile.

She had just informed them that their detention would be spent cleaning the Quidditch communal shower floor. Together. Alone. Without magic.

Harry was obviously remembering their previous encounter in this location with abject terror.

It was all Draco could do to keep from pissing himself laughing.

"Isn't their any other tile surface I could be cleaning?" Harry asked nervously. "I mean, I'll clean anything! Anywhere but here!"

McGonagall raised a semi-surprised eyebrow. "Would you care to share your particular objection to the Quidditch showers, Mr Potter?" she asked disinterestedly.

"Erm," Harry burbled, shooting a glance at Draco which was studiously ignored.

"Well then..." McGonagall said briskly.

"D'you really think it's wise to leave us alone together?" Harry interrupted desperately. "We might kill each other."

McGonagall gave him a superior look. "Well, it would certainly solve many of my problems, Mr Potter. What makes you think that particular scenario wasn't precisely the outcome I had planned for tonight?"

Harry looked adorably confounded. Draco snorted.

"Your wands," McGonagall said with a sigh, holding out her hands. Draco and Harry reluctantly handed them over.

"I'll return at midnight, so see that you're done by then. Enjoy yourselves, boys," McGonagall said with a suggestive wink that should have made Harry pause and think a little, but was ineffective because Harry was staring at Draco with an expression that clearly screamed, 'Oh for fuck's sake, someone give me a God-damned BREAK!' She then turned in a flurry of tartan and sashayed out the door.

The silence was quite silent, really. And prolonged. Harry stared at his toothbrush as if it held the answers to all of the mysteries of the universe. Draco, however, stared at his with his lip curled in disgust, as if it were something particularly slimy that had somehow crawled into his salad.

After an interminable pause, Harry sighed and walked to the far, far side of the large room and slumped to his knees, scrubbing at the floor in a desultory manner. He looked the absolute picture of misery, and Draco felt a sudden pang in the region of his heart.

Draco followed Harry slowly, falling to his knees in front of him and scrubbing at a spot less than an inch from where Harry's brush was circling so industriously. He was so close he could feel the heat coming off Harry's body, smell the gorgeous spicy, clean scent of his aftershave, and feel his thick dark hair falling to intertwine with his own blonde locks. Draco knew he was being deliberately provocative, but he couldn't seem to help himself. He wanted to be close to Harry, regardless of the situation, or the consequences.

Harry, still feeling guilty about Quidditch and not in the mood for any further confrontation, immediately got up without looking at the other boy, and relocated to the other side of the room.

Draco followed and knelt beside him once more.

Harry moved.

Draco followed.

Harry moved.

Draco followed.

This went on for quite some time.

Finally, Harry dragged his eyes from their fixed mark on the floor and found Draco's own, slightly mocking, grey ones right in front of his.

Harry sighed wearily. "I don't want to fight, Malfoy," he said. "I'm too sodding tired. Just leave me alone, will you?"

Something in Draco twisted at the morose, exhausted tone of Harry's voice.

"You want I should give you a massage?" Draco asked innocently. "It works wonders for fatigue." Hey, he wasn't a saint. Just because he loved the guy, didn't mean he wasn't going to keep up with his careful plan of seduction. Of course, this had much more to do with the fact that he was climbing the walls with wanting the idiot Gryffindor, than the fact that he stood to make a lot of money off the end result. But why tell the truth when a bollocks lie will do instead?

Harry stared at him as if he'd grown a second head. Then he laughed. It was the most mocking, scornful laugh Draco had ever heard. And that, given that Draco had lived his whole life with pimp-boy Lucius Malfoy, was saying something.

"You say that as if you think I'd actually ever let you lay a hand on me, Malfoy," Harry drawled viciously. "Which is ridiculous, really. I might catch something."

Draco recoiled, stung. And then rallied with relief. Really, all this touchy-feely emotion with regards to Harry was putting him off-balance. It was nice to get back to good, old-fashioned, hate-filled bickering. "Might catch yourself enjoying it, that's for sure and for certain," he said suggestively.

Harry huffed and rolled his eyes silently, unable to refute that basic truth.

Draco continued devilishly, "Of course, if you prefer, we could do what we did last time we were in here..." 

Harry snergled and went on scrubbing.

"Did you just snergle?" Draco asked incredulously, then went on, "Weird though it was, I'm gonna let that one slide. But only because you look so very appealing on your hands and knees."

Harry gave him a filthy look.

"Of course, I'm all in for missionary, so on your back is just as good," Draco continued with a very pretty smirk.

Harry closed his eyes against that particular mental picture.

Draco went on in a more calculatedly sexy voice, "Or perhaps you'd rather I was on mine...?"

At that, Harry started, and looked up at Draco with something akin to despair in his eyes. "I'd rather," he spat through gritted teeth, "you left me alone."

"Oh, how wildly unexciting, Potter," Draco camped. "Are you certain? I mean, here we are, all alone in this lovely little room, with its lovely little tile floor, all sorts of possibilities, wouldn't you say? No-one to hear me scream?"

"I had you figured for more of a whiner, actually," Harry muttered irrelevantly, and continued to scrub.

"Only one way to find out," Draco smirked with a sense of deja vu. Why did he feel as though he and Harry were just running in circles?

Harry was silent, and Draco pouted. Consistent rejection will do that to a guy.

More seduction, less talking, Draco thought purposefully. "Is it hot in here?" he asked innocently and flung off his robes dramatically, the swish of fabric drawing Harry's attention.

Draco smirked, meeting suddenly hot green eyes with amused grey, and then started seductively fingering the top few buttons of his shirt.

Harry squeaked and looked hurriedly away, attacking the floor with his toothbrush as if it were responsible for all the evils of the world.

Draco laughed.

"God I hate you," Harry groaned under his breath and stood to give his aching knees a rest.

"I love you, too, Potter," Draco said lightly, the slightest tremor giving away the underlying truth to the statement.

Harry gave him an utterly unreadable look and continued to scrub as if his life depended on it. Minutes passed. Then more minutes. You couldn't have cut the tension with a meat cleaver. Unless you wanted to end up with a very blunt meat cleaver. It was quite tense.

Finally Harry stood with a groan and stretched, arching his tired body and making saliva pool in Draco's mouth. Oh yum, he thought, eyeing the hard, taut lines of Harry's body, the strip of tanned skin at the hipster waistband of his jeans that was revealed as he lifted his arms into the stretch.

Harry caught Draco staring and smirked just a little, which was all he was capable of at this juncture. "You could help me, you know," he said. "This work'd go a lot faster if both of us were doing it."

"Both of us doing it is exactly what I had in mind, Potter," Draco said and grinned devilishly.

"Oh for sodding Christ's sake," Harry exploded temperamentally. "Is that all you fucking think about? The fucking bet?! Give it up already, Draco!" He gestured wildly about with his toothbrush, looking like he was onstage declaiming Yeats or something.

Draco, who had quite forgotten about the bet for the past few hours and was simply acting on his own personal agenda, suddenly woke up.

Harry continued. "I mean, aren't we past this by now? Why are you pushing it? Is it really about the money? Or are you just set on fucking humiliating me at every sodding turn?! I thought after the fucking Potions incident, we had established that there is no way that I am going to fuck you during this month?"

"And after this month?" Draco asked hesitantly and not entirely on purpose. Really, you'd think after seventeen years his mouth would've learned to listen to his brain before opening.

Harry blinked. Of all the things Draco could have said, that was possibly the last thing Harry had expected. Excepting of course, 'I am pregnant with Hagrid's child and we are to be married within the week'. Second last, then.

He opened and shut his mouth several times before finally saying, "What do you think?"

Draco furrowed his brow. "It can't exactly go on the way it was before, can it? I mean, I've seen you naked..."

Harry looked dumbfounded. What the hell was the idiot on about?

"Perhaps we should call a truce," Draco said.

"A truce?" Harry asked weakly. "A truce?" His voice was deceptively mild.

Draco prepared himself for an explosion of some kind.

"A fucking TRUCE?! What would be the sodding point?! After everything you and this fucking bet have put me through, Malfoy, you really expect me to be....to be friends with you?!" 

When he put it that way, Draco thought, it didn't sound like such a good plan.

"Not friends so much," Draco said, knowing full well he was digging himself into a hole but being strangely unable to stop himself. "Just not enemies so much either."

"We are enemies, Malfoy," Harry said bleakly. "Make no mistake about it. No-one but my enemy could have thought up a worse or more appropriate form of torture than this." Harry was not referring to the going-without-sex-thing. More like the falling-in-love-with-totally-inappropriate-boy-thing.

Draco was suddenly angry. "God, could you be any more shallow? A single month without sex and you seem to think that's enough justification for the kind of hatred you hold for Voldemort or something."

Harry blinked in surprise at his vehemence. "You obviously have no idea how much I've been suffering, Malfoy," he said truthfully.

"And you think I haven't?" Draco said before he could stop himself.

"Truthfully, no," Harry said, misinterpreting his statement, much to Draco's relief. "I can't lose this bet, Malfoy. I really can't."

"Would it really be so bad?" Draco asked seriously, and for a second Harry found himself considering it. No, the whole shagging Draco part really wouldn't be so bad. But the aftermath....

"You don't know what's at stake," Harry said bitterly. "It's more than you can imagine."

"Oh yes, your precious reputation as Gryffindor Sex God extraordinaire," Draco spat disgustedly. "I couldn't possibly even begin to appreciate what the loss of that kind of status might do to your fragile ego."

Harry frowned. "That wasn't what I was talking about," he muttered, and started to turn away.

"Right," Draco drawled sarcastically. "What else could you possibly stand to lose?"

My heart, Harry thought but prevented himself from saying by a very large effort of will. He was turning into rather a git about this whole thing, he thought. He was suddenly very tired of playing these fucking mind games.

Still Draco continued. "It's not like you couldn't afford to pay me out, so there must be something else involved...maybe there's someone special that'd be unimpressed if you shagged someone as gorgeous as me - oh, wait, I forgot that that isn't possible; the day the great Sex God Harry fucking Potter actually falls for someone is the day I become Prime Minister of Muggle Britain! You couldn't save yourself for someone special if your fucking life depended on it! You're incapable of love, aren't you, Potter...?"

Draco trailed off as he realised he had lost his point somewhere in the middle of a bitter, angst-boy rant about Harry's inability to commit, and was suddenly very frightened that he might've revealed too much.

"And what business is it of yours?" Harry asked angrily, wishing very hard indeed that Draco would just stop hitting him with barbs that were so fucking well aimed. "You aren't my fucking keeper...last I checked you weren't even my friend! You aren't anything to me, so why are you so very interested in my affairs?"

Draco was silent.

"Perhaps you're so dissatisfied with your own life you feel justified in prying into mine?" Harry said with a false, musing tone that rang with campy psychiatric undertones. "Or perhaps you're just a really horrible fucking git with too much time and not enough things to do."

"Or perhaps I..." Draco started temperamentally, and then stopped himself.

Harry looked at him expectantly. "You what?"

"Perhaps I think we should maybe get back to work," Draco said lamely, suddenly too tired to fight anymore.

Harry looked deflated. "Whatever, Malfoy," he said dully, and crouched dutifully.

"Finally he submits to my will," Draco claimed dramatically to the room at large.

Harry scoffed.

"One day you might," Draco said defensively.

"So we're back to this," Harry groaned dejectedly. "Why don't you just go ahead and say it, Malfoy. 'I want you Harry you big sexy stud guy...and I promise, it has nothing to do with the fact that I stand to win a whole hell of a lot of money should you decide to fuck me...it's all about chemistry, baby, I swear'..." The sentence was such an absolute mockery of the truth that Draco was compelled to laugh.

Harry frowned. "What? Isn't that how things usually happen in this scenario?"

Draco shook his head and laughed some more. "Big sexy stud guy?" he finally asked, no small amount of incredulousness in his voice.

Harry grinned. "Others have said it before you, rest assured."

Draco's mouth dropped open. "Really?" he asked with surprise.

"No."

"Oh."

"Draco?"

"Yep?"

"Get to work."

Draco kneeled morosely and started scrubbing.

He grew bored almost immediately.

"You know," he said conversationally, "I've never had sex in a shower room before."

Harry moaned quietly.

"I hear it's quite hot and wanton, really. All that sultry running water and cool tiles and goosebumps and..." He trailed off invitingly.

"Not interested," Harry lied tightly.

Draco was looking with great interest at the sexy curve of Harry's thigh, and found himself quite unable to stop himself from running a hand up the length of it. "You sure? Might be fun..."

"Oh for absolute fuck's sake! I have had it!" Harry exploded and stood suddenly, hauled Draco up with him, and shoved the blonde against the nearest wall.

"So that's a yes?" Draco asked breathlessly.

Harry just growled and slid his hard body into Draco's, and Draco's eyes widened as he realised just how interested Harry was. The Slytherin was instantly overcome with desire. He let himself moan a little and arched his hips into Harry's just enough to let Harry know that he wasn't the only one suffering.

"Draco," Harry whispered in his ear, pressing his hot, taut form right up against Draco's, making the blonde curve into him like hot fudge and groan with agonised want.

"Hm?" Draco mouthed, lips grazing Harry's neck. He tipped out his tongue to taste the sweet salt of Harry's skin and breathed the spicy, gorgeous scent of him, feeling dizzy with desire and love. Harry shuddered and came so close to surrender, knees giving out and eyes closing in pleasure. But then his resolve hardened and he did what he had to. It couldn't go on like this. He couldn't go on like this. It hurt.

"Do me a favour?" Harry asked, his hands sliding into both of Draco's against the wall, fingers intertwining sweetly. He moved one of Draco's hands to where their slender hips slid against each other so pleasurably. Draco couldn't help but grind against their joined hands and his head fell back against the wall

"Anything," Draco couldn't stop himself from breathing.

Harry grinned and closed Draco's fingers around the Slytherin's own straining erection.

Draco opened heavy-lidded, desire-sleepy eyes and looked at him with surprise.

"Go fuck yourself," Harry said, and turned and walked away.

* * * *

Minerva McGonagall pulled back from the inconspicuous hole in the wall of the Quidditch showers, very flushed. She huffed with disgust, and then stalked quickly to the door, slipping through and closing it silently behind her. She stepped behind a shadowed corner of the building and watched as Harry exited after her in a rush. Her brow furrowed as she watched him aim his wand at his own groin and whisper some kind of charm, and then stalk away, robes billowing in the moonlight.

As soon as she was sure he was gone, she allowed herself a breathy moan.

"Ooo-er," she whispered, fanning herself with her tartan hat.

Really, there was a very big something to be said for necking teenage boys.

It took Minerva some time to come to terms with the extremely hot scene she had just witnessed, and then she realised two things. Firstly, she had just successfully blown several hundred galleons on today's wager. And secondly, Harry Potter had just completely skived detention.

She frowned and re-entered the room quietly, expecting at any moment to run into Draco Malfoy also deciding to leave. What she saw surprised her. Draco had slumped to lie spread-eagled on the cold tile floor, looking the absolute picture of dejection and disappointment. Even as she watched, he pulled himself up morosely, picked up his toothbrush and started scrubbing at the floor with a resolute sort of persistence that suggested he would most likely be there all night. Doing Potter's detention. Without saying a word.

Minerva was not a stupid woman, but even she was at a loss to figure out what exactly that meant.


	9. Chapter 9

Love can suck my...

Harry slumped on a couch in the Gryffindor common room, looking the utter picture of morose dismay, and groaned theatrically. Everyone in the vicinity ignored him; this sort of behaviour was becoming relatively common in light of recent events. Nothing to set a boy to groaning like celibacy and forbidden love, all mixed up into one month of living hell.

Day twenty nine, Harry thought to himself with a mixture of elation and terror. Second last day of ultimate torture, and also the day that Draco Malfoy had his name down to win what had grown into a thirty thousand galleon pot. And was the great Harry Potter afraid?

Of course he fucking was! The sexiest boy Harry had ever had occasion to meet was hell bent on seducing him into what would undoubtedly be the most phenomenally amazing sexual encounter known to mankind, and the poor Gryffindor was finding it more and more unlikely that he would be capable of saying no.

Harry accidentally thought about having sex with Draco and was instantly aroused. Despite Harry's best efforts at forcing the contrary, Phantom Draco had become a regular fixture in Harry's mind. His repertoire was sensational. For instance, right now, he had decided to do a very seductive lap dance on the sofa in Harry's subconscious, and was down to a feather boa and not much else, grooving to Nine Inch Nails and looking absolutely fuckable.

Harry groaned again.

Ron took pity. "Alright there, Harry?" he asked mildly.

He received no reply.

"Harry, mate, you there? Harry...? Harry!?"

Harry looked up absently and brushed a black bang from his eyes. "What is it, Ron?" he asked vaguely.

Ron shook his head in exasperation. "Are you okay, mate? You look kind of...well, upset...."

Harry looked amazed for a second, and then started to laugh hysterically.

Ron shared a frown with Hermione, who had reluctantly looked up from her Arithmancy assignment at the manic tone of Harry's mirth.

"Care to let the rest of us in on the joke, Harry?" Hermione asked gently.

"The joke?" Harry asked with a dangerous sort of tone in his voice. "The fucking joke?!"

Hermione braced.

"The FUCKING JOKE, Hermione, is my FUCKING LIFE right now!" Harry exploded.

Hermione gave him a superior look. "Not to be unsympathetic, Harry, but it's just sex. Why is this so hard for you?"

"It isn't just sex, Hermione," Harry replied, subsiding with a sigh. "It is so far beyond just sex that it isn't even funny anymore."

Ron looked mildly interested. "So what is it?" he asked unsubtly, flicking absently through Quidditch World for the advertisements containing stunning female models straddling brooms in a most appealing manner. Oddly enough, Hermione had never noticed this little habit of his.

Harry looked at his two best friends meditatively. He wondered what had changed. The old Harry would've had the truth out in a second: 'I'm in love with Draco Malfoy and he is only interested in seducing me for money and as a consequence my life has become a screaming bint...' or something to that effect. But the holy trinity had somewhere along the line grown apart. Ron had Hermione and Hermione had Ron and Harry...well, Harry had everyone else, severally and together. Which had been okay for a while. But Harry missed his friends and the easy, honest relationship they used to have before everything got complicated. He wanted to tell them about Draco. He wanted to really badly. But how does one start that conversation -- especially with a boy who wouldn't piss on the Slytherin if he were on fire, and a girl that had ignored him for the better part of three years?

All this thinking had taken some minutes, seeing as our Harry was not the fastest thinker in all the world, and by the time he had opened his mouth to respond to Ron's question, the redhead had found his entire interest captured by an article on the new Starburst 3000. Hermione was similarly occupied with her Arithmancy. They had obviously given him up for a madman.

Harry closed his mouth, smiled a very small smile, and then threw an arm across his eyes in a dramatic manner.

Two days to go, he told himself. Two days, and everything gets normal again.

Funny how normal just didn't seem good enough anymore.

* * * *

Ginny Weasley stared up at the betting parchment with despair. She had placed two separate bets over the entire month - one several days previous, which had passed with not even a single seductive skirmish to ruin Harry's day; and the other today, day twenty-nine, the same day as Draco Malfoy and half a dozen others. Ginny was not your average Gryffindor - her run in with, and subsequent possession by, Tom Riddle in first year had left her with a few, shall we say, unsavoury talents and characteristics that might've shocked your average Gryffindor into an early grave - and as such, was quite sneaky and observant. She had noticed early on the smouldering tension between Harry and Draco, and had realised that the gorgeous blonde Slytherin had possibly more chance than anyone else at making Harry fail in his resolution. So she had bet accordingly.

However, it was already mid-morning and Draco Malfoy was nowhere to be found, Harry was mooching about in Gryffindor tower and there was not a skerrick of seduction to be seen anywhere.

Action needed to be taken.

Ginny, for all her, er, unsavoury talents and characteristics, was not, however, an accomplished seductress. She was not going to be capable of seducing Harry herself, particularly if his fancy currently ran in the direction of arrogant, slender, unutterably sexy, blonde boys. Thus she had given up on that idea a very long time ago.

So it seemed that her only option was to give Draco Malfoy all the help she was capable of. Which, given her, er, unsavoury talents, was quite considerable.

The only problem was that Gryffindor tower (and therefore Harry), was locked up tighter than Fort Knox and guarded by a troop of uber-protective friends, an extremely zealous portrait and a extensively complicated password; and Draco, skulking in the Slytherin dungeons as was his wont, had no way of getting up there to utilise his considerable skills of seduction to make them all rich.

What Ginny needed was a Really Cunning Plan. However, when she had gone to the library in order to find a book on Cunning Plans, she had found the entire shelf empty, much to her dismay. She was not to know that Harry Potter himself had taken the lot earlier that day to institute some planning of his own. So she had to content herself with a Slightly Cunning Plan devised all of her own intellect, which was minimal, at best.

What she needed was an ally -- someone in Slytherin who had contact with Draco, and could help her carry out her Evil Scheme. Someone like....well, Blaise Zabini was coming up the stairs from the dungeon, looking surprisingly attractive in a very familiar pair of stolen leather trousers, so she supposed he'd do.

"Zabini?" she asked.

Blaise stopped and gave her a once over, liking what he saw. He'd always had a thing for redheads, and if the brother wasn't available, the sister might do just as well.

"What is it, Weasley? Don't you have better things to do than sit around in our common room and take up space?" he asked scathingly.

Ginny was immediately attracted to him. Something to do with a strange masochistic fascination with men who were cruel, degrading, and otherwise not very nice to her. Odd, that.

"I notice you've a bet on for today," Ginny said mockingly, giving him a derisive once over with her cool brown eyes.

Blaise was immediately attracted to her. Something to do with a strange masochistic fascination with women who had a high likelihood of having a spanking-fetish. Odd, that.

"Yeah, what's it to you?" Blaise said. Really, this arrogance act was easier than he'd thought.

"So have I," Ginny said patiently, thinking how gorgeous and arrogant he was.

"I'm still waiting for a point to be found in this conversation," Blaise replied, rolling his eyes and looking a little like a camel in leather trousers, which was a somewhat surprising visual combination.

"I thought perhaps we could work together," Ginny stated expressionlessly.

"What makes you think I need your help, Weasley? I've got the trousers and the attitude. Harry Potter won't be able to resist me." Blaise tossed his head confidently.

Ginny laughed, and Blaise frowned as his ego was punctured. "What?" he asked belligerently.

"It's just incredibly amusing that you think you have a chance with Harry when Draco Malfoy is in the running," Ginny said mockingly.

Blaise sat down heavily next to her and sighed. "I forgot that Draco was on today. Is he really going after Potter?"

"I assume so, seeing as how they are totally into each other," Ginny replied seriously. Of course, she didn't actually know that Draco and Harry fancied each other, but it sounded good.

Blaise looked surprised. "They...er, like each other? Aren't they sort of like...enemies or something?"

"Yeah, weird isn't it? Like a story or something. Yin and yang, light and dark, good and evil, blah blah blah. Apparently it's all about chemistry, baby." Ginny laughed.

Blaise laughed with her. "So what did you have in mind for us?"

Ginny got a very dark and wicked look in her eye that Blaise liked immensely. She shook herself and moved on rapidly. "You mean us working together? Sure. The way I figure, Malfoy's big obstacle is the fact that he can't penetrate Gryffindor security. Our job, I thought, could be to somehow insert him into the tower so he can go up and do his seduction thing. It'll all depend on timing and rhythm if we're to play it right. Still, if things go according to plan, we remain totally innocent, Harry gets shagged, we get rich, and everyone is totally satisfied. The way I see it, it'll be nice and easy, and an absolute pleasure to work with you. Don't you think?"

Blaise was very hot and bothered after this little innuendo-laden speech. "Sure," he squeaked in what he hoped was a manly sort of way.

Ginny grinned. "Well, have you any ideas as to how we can get Draco into Gryffindor tower without a bunch of Gryffindors tearing him limb from limb?"

Blaise thought. "Well, what about a diversionary tactic? If all the Gryffs come racing out of the tower, you could slide Draco in there without anyone noticing a thing."

Ginny smiled seductively. "What did you have in mind for a diversion?" 

"Truthfully, the only thing I can think of is you and I having sex in a stairwell in public. It'd certainly cause a storm," Blaise suggested with a sexy smile.

Ginny pretended to deliberate. "Hmm...sounds okay, let's do it," she said.

"Huh?!" Blaise said, very uncoolly. "You mean you actually...what, right now...?"

Ginny laughed mockingly. "No, you idiot!"

"Oh."

"Points for trying, though. I think that there are probably simpler ways of achieving our ends. What I'm thinking involves a stolen Invisibility Cloak and me giving Draco the password."

"Yeah," Blaise said sulkily. "Well what I'm thinking involves you, me, nakedness, and sex in a stairwell. Possibly also chocolate syrup and spanking, both of which are preferred, but optional."

Ginny grinned. "Flip for it?" she asked, pulling out her lucky Knut.

Blaise nodded. "You call."

"Heads," Ginny murmured seductively, licking her lips in a most sensual manner.

Blaise groaned. "Tits...I mean, tails," he replied un-suavely.

Ginny flipped.

Heads it was.

Blaise growled. "Best two of three?" he asked hopefully.

"No way," Ginny replied with a grin. "I'm off to the dorms to nick Harry's cloak, I'll be back in fifteen. I want you to go and round up Draco, let him know what we're doing. See you in a tic."

Blaise nodded and stood, leather trousers hiding nothing of his attraction. Ginny stood as well and sidled past him in the tight space between their armchairs. She let her hips linger across his longer than was strictly necessary, and he groaned appreciatively.

Really, she thought. There was something to be said for this seduction game after all.

* * * *

She was back down to the dungeons in a trice, having filched the poorly-guarded Cloak from an unsuspecting Harry's trunk with what she thought was upmost stealth. She had stopped breathing for a minute there when she had met Harry coming up to the dorms as she was on her way down, but the poor boy had been shaking his head and muttering about strawberries and bellies and Gryffindor tower, and had passed by her without even the slightest glance in her direction. Which was quite serendipitous, really. If somewhat unflattering.

Arriving back in the empty Slytherin common room (apparently there was some Misbegotten Spawn of Evil Wizards association meeting going on, which had grabbed everyone else's attention), Ginny looked around but couldn't see hide nor hair of either Blaise or Draco.

Snooping was another of her, er, unsavoury talents, and she did so now, looking around stealthily. She found Blaise in his dorm room in front of a full length mirror. He had his back turned to the glass and was looking at his rear-view reflection over one shoulder.

"Blaise!" she exclaimed crossly, "What are you doing?"

Blaise started guiltily. "Sorry, but my arse is just so hot in these trousers, I find it strangely compelling."

Ginny reluctantly agreed. "So did you find Draco?"

"Yeah, he's just showering. He'll be out in a tic. Meantime, why don't you come in and tell me if you think my arse feels as damned good as it looks?"

Ginny obliged. "Yup," she said, copping a double handful and giving him a good squeeze. "Feels pretty damn fine to me."

Just then, Draco sauntered in and was slightly shocked at the image of his second in command and the little redhead with her hands full of his leather-clad arse. His lip curled in disgust. "Zabini, what the hell?"

"Oh, hallo Drake. Just test-driving these trousers."

Draco nodded understandingly. "Just so you know, they looked better on Potter."

Blaise looked crestfallen. "Yeah, well, whatever." He took the cloak from where it rested over Ginny's shoulder and passed it to Draco reluctantly.

Draco took it wordlessly and raised an eyebrow at Ginny.

"You know," she said with interest, "When you do that you look kind of like a girl. A slightly insane one. But it's quite attractive still. D'you think I might be a lesbian?"

Blaise looked wildly interested.

"The password, you silly bint," Draco reminded her with unbelievable mildness.

"Oh, right. Funny you should ask after we were just talking about it. It's 'hot-n-steamy-lesbian-loving'. Ron's choice," Ginny said abstractedly.

Draco smirked. "Thank you."

"Oh, welcome. Good luck with the whole gung-ho-seduction-plan by the by," Ginny said cheerfully. "You do have a plan, right?"

Draco looked scornful. "I don't need a plan, little Weasley. I have charm, wit, a sexy outfit, a body to die for, and the face of an angel. All I need is time."

"Good-o," Ginny said, and turned back to Blaise. "Best get on with it then," she tossed over her shoulder.

"I'll just go, shall I?" Draco said to a non-existent audience and stalked out.

"Now then," Ginny said purposefully to a slavering Blaise. "When you talked before about syrup and spanking, were you serious, or just joking? Because I don't know about the syrup, but the spanking sounds like it could be fun..."

Blaise's mouth dropped open.

Apparently sadism was also among Ginny's, er, unsavoury predispositions.

Suffice it to say, after that afternoon, Blaise Zabini said a thankful prayer at the altar of the God of Leather Trousers (named Paulie, by the way) every evening for the rest of his life.

* * * *

Despite extensive reading on the subject, the most Cunning Plan Harry could devise involved him hiding in his dorm room the entire day. Thus it was that he was lying on his bed at noon on a Saturday, fantasising about Draco Malfoy in various positions of the Kama Sutra.

Eventually, many sleepless nights spent doing the exact same thing caught up with him, and Harry fell into restless slumber. Three guesses who he dreamed of, and the first two don't count.

* * * *

Draco, having used Harry's Cloak to great effect sneaking past the ravening hordes of Gryffindors in the hideously appointed common room, stood in Harry's dorm watching its owner for a very long time. He felt vaguely voyeuristic but was understandably aroused as the other boy twisted and turned amidst sweat-heavy sheets, in evident agony, for the better part of ten minutes.

He wondered with great interest as to whom the object of Harry's thoughts was - the boy was harder than an oak plank, lean body taut and hot with longing, sweat beading upon brown skin and sinews taut as bowstrings standing out at his throat and in his forearms as his fingers clenched viciously around the bedclothes. Harry wore no shirt, and the lean, grooved muscle adorning his chest and abdomen was tight and stretched to snapping point with the tension of arousal and frustration. His hard-on was very much evident beneath tight-fitting jeans, and his eyes were tightly shut as his jaw clenched and thrust upward with tightly-reigned control. In short, he was breathtaking.

Draco closed and locked the door behind him loudly, and Harry's eyes flicked open, his head coming up instantaneously and his stomach clenching in surprise.

Draco shook the invisibility cloak off with a whirl, and paused for effect.

He wasn't disappointed. Harry leapt off his bed as if stung, and stood, gobsmacked, for a good minute.

"What the hell are you doing in here?" he asked finally, shoving his hands in his pockets and kicking at the shagpile in a most adorable manner.

"Just thought I'd return this," Draco said innocently. "You seem to have misplaced it. Wouldn't want it falling into the wrong hands. No telling what a devious soul might try to do with it..."

Harry mouthed ineffectually. He was hard, he was desperate, and Draco was there in his room. This was not really going according to his very, very Cunning Plan.

"And you don't classify yourself as a devious soul?" Harry asked idiotically, damning his Cunning Plan all to hell and trying frantically to think about anything besides his erection and the Slytherin git responsible for it, who was, incidentally, standing quite within shagging distance.

"I am reformed," Draco said piously, and then slanted Harry a wicked look from beneath his eyelashes that proved to be hazardous to Harry's self control.

"Right," Harry said disbelievingly. "And I'm still not so cluey about why you're still here..."

"What, no 'thank you'?" Draco asked piteously.

"Thank you."

"What, no thank you kiss?" the Slytherin asked in exactly the same tone.

Harry looked equally aghast and tempted, and Draco laughed.

"Joke, Potter."

"Yeah, real funny. Look, I was trying to get some sleep. If there isn't anything else..." Harry said quietly.

"There was, actually," Draco said in a tone that boded very, very ill for Harry's virtue.

"I dread to ask..." Harry deadpanned.

"I'm here to finally seduce you," Draco announced.

Harry looked at him incredulously. Then he laughed. "And what the hell would you call all the other recent interactions we've shared up till this point?" he asked with genuine interest.

"Foreplay," Draco grinned.

Harry closed his eyes. "I can't play this game with you anymore, Malfoy."

Draco frowned. "Why not?" he asked plaintively. "It's fun."

"For you maybe. But tell me, how exactly would you feel if your supposed worst enemy was trying to make you do the one thing you absolutely want, which is, oddly enough, the one thing you absolutely musn't do?"

"Well, you are making me do the one thing I absolutely want and absolutely musn't do, so I'd feel like it was fair enough, really," Draco said with circular logic.

Harry frowned in confusion. "And what would that be?"

"To seduce you," Draco said, grinning with triumph.

Harry looked confused.

"I want you, Harry," Draco said, with rare honesty and raw sincerity in his eyes.

"Jesus," Harry cursed. "You really have all the angles covered, don't you? I mean, I could actually believe you -- except I'm not a complete idiot."

"Well, I'd refute that statement, but I don't want you throwing a hissy fit and refusing to sleep with me. I don't think my ego could take any further rejection from you," Draco said, grinning.

Harry winced. "In case you failed to notice, Draco, I am refusing to sleep with you."

Draco's smile deepened. "Who said you get to have a choice in the matter?" he asked, deeply amused. "You don't actually think I'd take that chance, do you? I mean, my ego is very fragile."

Harry frowned. Then Draco put a leg-locker curse on him, and it occurred to him that he should probably be panicking. So he panicked.

"Draco, what the fuck are you doing? This is insane," he squeaked, as Draco advanced on him slowly. Harry struggled, but was quite unable to move.

Draco smirked. "I know. But then, so is the entire concept of me wanting you, and you wanting me, so I rather thought it was appropriate."

"Come on, Draco," Harry pleaded. "Don't do this. D'you really want to have sex with a person who is only involved because you've forced them to be there?"

"By the time I'm finished with you, Harry Potter," Draco murmured seductively into his ear, "Leg-locker or no, you won't be capable of leaving. Or moving. Or even speaking. Which, I must say, will be a great improvement." With a smirk, Draco took the remaining steps and brushed his body up against Harry's, making the other boy close his eyes and whimper.

Slowly, achingly thoroughly, Draco rotated his pelvis against Harry's. The dark-haired boy graduated to a full groan and shuddered against him.

"I don't want this," Harry lied, his voice starting to come in small gasps.

Draco smiled and slid his hips into Harry's again, then slowly trailed kisses up the other boy's collar bone, to his shoulder, and around to the back of his neck, stalking around Harry's still form. From behind him, Draco took Harry's ear in his mouth and concurrently slid a hand firmly down Harry's naked belly.

"Are you certain?" Draco asked, sliding his hand under Harry's trousers and teasing the skin above and around Harry's erection, coming so seductively close but never quite reaching its target.

"No, not really," Harry replied with a moan that made Draco's eyes close with pure want. He slid his hand hard over Harry's shaft, and Harry ground himself into it involuntarily. His breath huffed out on a sob of pleasure. "Oh Christ," he whispered in agony. "Oh Draco, please..."

"Please what?" Draco asked, his lips moving to the nape of Harry's neck and teasing the uber-sensitive skin there with utmost delicacy, quite in contrast to the hard strokes he was administering to that other part of Harry's anatomy with increasing inconsistency as his own arousal started to overcome his co-ordination.

"Please don't do this to me. You know why. I know you know."

"Oh but I don't know, Harry. Why don't you tell me..." Draco invited.

"You make me feel. I don't want it. I can't. Why can't you just stay away from me so I don't have to do this? It isn't fair," Harry whimpered, only just coherent enough for Draco to glean some basic understanding of what he was getting at. So what if the bastard was starting to 'feel'? What about the fact that Draco was being forced to 'feel' absolute, debilitating love in this equation? Was that fair? Was it fair that every moan Harry breathed was going straight from Draco's ears, to his groin, and then to his heart? Was it fair that Draco was all of a sudden starting to wonder why he was really doing this at all?

"Oh, sod it all," Draco said despairingly. This wasn't going as planned. How was he supposed to keep up with his careful plan of seduction and destruction when Harry was just so damned sweet and edible and strangely innocent and shaggable, and was making Draco want so much more than just meaningless sex that shouldn't even be happening in the first place?

This had to end. It had to end now. Because Draco's heart was starting to hurt. And that was not okay at all.

Draco walked back around Harry and faced him. Then, slowly and deliberately, he pushed Harry against the wall behind him and advanced upon the desperately aroused boy with an air of great determination.

Harry practically cowered against the cool stone, his eyes screwed shut in mingled pain and pleasure.

"Don't," Harry whispered, so softly that Draco almost didn't hear him. "Please, Draco. Please don't...I...I won't be able to say no again."

The spectacle of the almighty Harry Potter begging Draco Malfoy for something wasn't nearly as satisfying as Draco had anticipated. The victory tasted ashy in his mouth, and he couldn't feel triumphant, only hollow. He wondered idly when things had changed. The old Draco Malfoy would've been gloating himself into a stupor by this point. What happened?

Harry fucking Potter happened, Draco thought, watching the other boy with slitted eyes, as if it hurt to look.

He took another step and Harry pushed himself back into the wall, as if he might go right through it if he wished hard enough.

Draco released his legs from the curse, and Harry slumped to his knees. Draco's eyes darkened at the possibilities. Enough of that, Draco told himself sternly. First things first.

"I've changed my mind, Harry," Draco whispered, his voice husky with need. "I'm giving you the choice. Tell me you want this. Tell me you want me. Now that I've given you the choice, tell me that you choose this, choose us," Draco held back his own need with sheer force of will and a little sellotape.

Harry looked at him seriously for a long time.

Then he spoke words Draco had never expected to hear, from anyone, in his life. "I never wanted anything more than I want you, right here and right now. It hurts so much I feel like I might die of it. You've won. I give up. Please, I'm begging you. I need you, Draco..."

Draco closed his eyes against the sincerity in Harry's agonised face.

Cursing himself for every kind of fool he took a deep breath and yanked himself away from Harry, taking a good six strides to the opposite side of Harry's dorm.

From his new safe position, Draco surveyed the devastation that he had wrought in the other boy, and felt his heart smote by a mighty blow. God, what had he almost done?

There was utter silence for a good five minutes as each boy struggled to get his body under control, the quiet broken only by the sound of erratic breathing. Draco leaned against the wall and tilted his head backward, eyes closed in something like agony. He opened them reluctantly and looked at the ceiling, unwilling to turn his gaze upon Harry for fear of what he might see.

When he finally did, he nearly wept. Harry was curled into a forlorn little ball against the far wall, his head in his hands and his entire body slumped with dejection and humiliation. He looked broken.

And I broke him, Draco thought miserably. He'd never felt so guilty or wretched in his whole life.

"Harry," he said involuntarily, reaching out an unconscious hand to the other boy in an odd gesture of reconciliation or apology.

Harry raised a stricken face toward him, and even Draco was shocked at the depths of hatred he read in the green-black eyes that bored into his own.

"Get out," Harry whispered.

Draco looked as if he was about to protest, but Harry uncurled himself quickly to his full height, taking an aggressive stance that shouted at Draco to back the fuck up and leave.

Draco took two steps backward toward the door. He had never wanted to apologise more in his whole life. He had an awful feeling that he had just fucked something up that could never be fixed, and it scared him how badly he wished he could take it all back.

Harry turned away. "Just leave, Malfoy. I can't bear to look at you," he murmured, his voice laden with hate and anger and misery and mortification.

"I'm sor..." Draco started, but Harry turned and spat savagely, "Don't even think about finishing that sentence. Just fuck off, Malfoy!"

Draco turned reluctantly and started to walk away.

"Oh and Malfoy," Harry hissed.

Draco turned, suddenly hopeful.

"Make sure you let the door hit you on the arse on the way out."

Draco did.

It seemed like the least he could do.

* * * *

Draco stalked through the Gryffindor common room like an avenging angel, a look of blackest despair etched upon his features.

All heads turned to watch his passage in astonishment: no one had seen him come in because he was covered with Harry's Cloak, so it seemed to them that he had appeared out of nowhere and swooped down upon them like a deadly animal of some sort, to make them all suffer for their sins.

He continued unchecked until the last minute. Just as he reached the portrait door, however, he found his path blocked by a solid phalanx of seventh year Gryffindors. Foremost among them were Weasley and the Mudblood, Seamus-AA-Finnigan and Neville I-should've-been-named-Useless Longbottom.

Draco glared at them.

They glared back.

This lasted some time.

Draco tossed his blonde forelock and drawled, "Fascinating as this little staring-contest-slash-Mexican-standoff has been, I'd love to get out of this place if you don't mind. The colour scheme does nothing for my complexion."

Ron sputtered, Hermione frowned, Longbottom squeaked and moved to let him pass, and Seamus looked as though he didn't agree with the latter statement at all, and instead was giving Malfoy an extremely thorough once over.

"What're you doing here, Malfoy?" Seamus asked with a foxy grin.

"Shopping," Draco said, deadpan. "You?"

"We actually belong here, Malfoy, you git," Ron said and scowled mightily.

Draco looked frosty. "You say that as if it's a good thing."

Ron looked confused. Hermione took over. "What have you done to Harry?"

Draco smirked. "Nothing he didn't beg me for."

Hermione looked confused. Longbottom took over. "If you've h-hurt him, we'll k-k-kill you, M-malfoy." Really, this Gryffindor tag-team conversation was quite bewildering.

"I wouldn't hurt him," Draco said hotly, revealing much more than he meant to.

Longbottom looked confused. Seamus took over. "Sure you wouldn't! You've done nothing but antagonise him since the day you met! He's very vulnerable now, what with this bullshit bet you've forced him into. We won't have you taking advantage..."

"I don't have to justify my actions to a bunch of Gryffindor idiots who require at least four combined brain capacities to carry out a simple conversation. What is between Harry and myself is between Harry and myself. And you're all fine ones to talk about taking advantage - every single one of you has tried to make Harry fail this bet at some point during the month. You, his supposed friends. No wonder he turned to being a sex-maniac if being mates with a bunch of backstabbing prats like you was his alternative. At least he always knew where he stood with me," Draco ranted.

The Gryffindors looked blank.

Draco threw his hands in the air in a gesture of despair. "Christ, it's like talking to a bunch of Fluttering Ferns, only stupider." 

"Hey!" Ron protested weakly in a bit of delayed reaction. "Who the hell do you think you are, coming in here and insulting us and our friendship with Harry! We love him! We're his friends! You're nothing to him, Malfoy, except a constant irritation. He hates you!"

Draco tightened his mouth. "He does now, anyway," he murmured inaudibly.

"So what exactly d'you think your business is, being in Harry's dorm?" Ron continued in a threatening sort of tone.

Draco looked down his nose at Ron. Which was quite difficult given the lanky git had a good four inches on him. "My business, you carroty git, was seduction, pure and simple."

There was a short silence.

"Oh," Ron said rather stupidly.

Hermione frowned. "Obviously you were unsuccessful, seeing as how the siren didn't go off, and you're standing in here instead of being in bed with Harry."

Draco was momentarily surprised at how unfazed they were by the prospect of his sleeping with Harry. Then he realised that Harry sleeping with Slytherins was hardly front page news. Harry slept with everyone. Draco was shocked to feel a pang of jealousy at the thought.

"I fail to see how it's any business of yours," he then replied icily. "My success, or in this case, failure, is my concern."

"And it's our money you stand to win," Seamus pointed out.

"Yes, well, you don't need to worry on that score. As our charming Hermione here so recently pointed out, I was unsuccessful, and therefore your precious galleons are still up for grabs."

The Gryffindors shared interested glances.

"I must confess that I'm a little surprised at your lack of headway, Malfoy," Hermione said. "I thought you, of all people, stood the greatest chance of making Harry fail."

"And why is that, pray tell?" Draco drawled disinterestedly.

"Ever since you started this whole bet thingy, Harry has been obsessed with you. He watches you all the time. Ron says he talks about you in his sleep. I mean, we don't go five seconds around here without a 'Malfoy this' or a 'Fucking Slytherin bastard that'. I thought it might have to do with chemistry or attraction. Apparently I was mistaken."

Ron looked suitably horrified at his girlfriend's assertion. Evidently the thought that Harry might be attracted to Draco had not crossed his mind.

Draco, on the other hand, was suddenly anything but disinterested. "And what, exactly, does he say about me in his sleep?" he asked Ron, who went slightly red.

"Just things about sharp instruments and various parts of your visceral anatomy," Ron lied airily.

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Hum."

"Yeah, he did say something weird last night, though. Something about you and a toothbrush? Oh yeah, I remember. He said, 'So many things I could do to you in a shower with a toothbrush, Malfoy.' Dead odd, that. Obviously he's having homicidal fantasies, Malfoy."

Draco smirked secretively. Homicidal his arse. It appeared that Harry was having kinky fantasies about the Quidditch showers and detention. How...interesting. These Gryffindors might prove informative, after all.

"Anything else?" he asked casually.

"Oh, he also said something about strangling you with your Quidditch cords. Of course, he just said 'take them off, Malfoy, so I can get you once and for all', but there's really no other explanation for that sort of statement," Ron continued blithely and very na�vely.

Draco refrained from laughing by absolute force of will. He was trying not to feel too pleased that Harry was going crazy with fantasies about him. Needless to say he was failing miserably.

Catching the smile on his face, Hermione said hotly, "I wish you'd just leave him alone, Malfoy. He doesn't need you putting the boot in at every opportunity. This month has been hard enough as it is, what with Cho and Trelawney and Snape ganging up on him." 

"And you lot, too, don't forget," Draco spat.

Hermione blushed.

"Perhaps you should all examine your own motivations before condemning mine. Hypocrisy is so last century." With this last pithy remark, Draco pushed between a very excited Seamus and a guilty-looking Hermione, and made an exceptionally spectacular exit from the room, robes billowing menacingly.

Hermione looked at the others thoughtfully. "Why d'you suppose he was so pleased that Harry's been dreaming about killing him?"

Longbottom looked stupid, Seamus grinned, and Ron sucked his thumb thoughtfully. "I dunno Herm," he said. "Perhaps if hypocrisy is last century, then maybe masochism is on its way in." He shook his head in confusion.

"Or maybe," Hermione said, "He knows something we don't."

"Wouldn't be hard," Seamus said. "We're just idiot Gryffindors after all."

The rest were forced to agree.

* * * *

Harry slept fitfully that night. Body wracked with longing, mind warring between hatred and adoration, he lay in twisted sheets and repeatedly envisioned Draco Malfoy's demise-slash-torture-slash-death-slash-otherwise anonymous, miscellaneous, unsavoury end. It was deeply unsatisfying - Harry's imagination simply wasn't adequate to conjure up appropriate punishments for the sadistic Slytherin bastard. So sometimes he was forced to invent the occasional sex image for good measure, simply to keep himself interested. These were also deeply unsatisfying, but for another reason altogether - in this situation, his imagination was so vivid and life-like that he found himself suffering from an arousal that was an inch away from being instantaneously lethal.

By the time dawn had thrown its stranglehold around the night sky, he had managed to successfully work himself up into a fervour of righteous wrath over the happenings of the previous day. What kind of person pushes another person to the very brink of agony, makes them need and want and fall to their Goddamned knees begging for mercy and release, and then just leaves them there to suffer?

Sick, sadistic, twisted Slytherin fucks. That's who.

Oh, Malfoy needs to pay, Harry thought with upmost violence. He needs to pay.

All morning he simmered on slow boil. In his bed, in the shower, at breakfast, at Quidditch practice, at lunch.

By midafternoon, his rage seethed wildly within him like a ravening beast.

Yes, Draco Malfoy would pay.

Right now, as a matter of fact.

Harry stood abruptly and walked away from his untouched Herbology revision, ignoring the glances of his friends. He marched straight to his room and collected his cloak and one other vital requirement before stalking back down to the common room. Pulling his wand out from his back pocket, he tapped it once to the parchment that shook in his other hand.

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good..."

For an eternal instant, Harry watched the very little dot labelled Draco Malfoy repose statically in a fairly innocuous, unlabelled little square of parchment that Harry knew to be the Slytherin's private room. Glaring at the dot viciously, Harry tapped the parchment again, wiping it blank.

Without a backward glance, he threw on his cloak and stormed out the door.


	10. Chapter 10

Irresolution

It was midafternoon and Draco slept fitfully in his dorm, tangled in silk sheets and dreaming of Harry Potter. He had not slept a single minute of the previous night, being otherwise occupied with wallowing in guilt and confusion, and was trying desperately to make up his lost time, but failing miserably. Draco had decided that he was possibly the world's most prodigious idiot. He had had Harry absolutely writhing under his hands, begging for release, and he had pushed him away. Pushed him away. What had he been thinking?

You were thinking that you were tired of making the boy you love suffer, I believe, said his inner smart-arse. "Yeah, yeah," Draco sighed out loud, wishing the stupid voice would just die of some incurable disease. "I know. But don't ask me what the fuck I'm supposed to do about it. I mean, yeah, I love him. And no, I don't want him to suffer. And no, I don't give a fuck about the stupid bet anymore. But damned if I know how the hell I'm gonna fix the absolute mess I've made of my chances with him."

The inner smart-arse had no answers either. Damned thing - so exceptional at pointing out what he already knew, so fucking useless at answering oh-so-important questions to which he had no response.

He had just fallen back into unconsciousness when his dubious peace was suddenly shattered by a voice shouting in his ear, drawing him from black oblivion to even blacker reality.

"I want to know what the fuck you think you're playing at, Draco Malfoy!" it ordered fiercely.

"Go on, get up you sick prat! I want a fucking word with you!" the voice became more strident, and was accompanied by warm hands seizing his shoulders and giving him a bone-rattling shake that jolted him to full awareness.

"What the fuck?!" Draco howled, arms striking out at his unseen adversary. The other person thankfully backed away, leaving Draco to untangle himself from his sheets and stand beside his bed, eyes seeking his attacker but finding nothing. Things began to dawn on him.

"Potter?" Draco asked tentatively, feeling stupid. Be funny if it weren't Harry, wouldn't it? his idiotic subconscious piped up, giggling hysterically. Draco wondered if he wasn't a bit insane.

With a whirl, the invisibility cloak came off and dangled carelessly from the artistic fingers of one extremely rashed off Harry Potter. He was flushed and shaking with anger, legs tensed and braced, hands curled into fists and arms akimbo, green eyes turned to hell-coloured, shadowy pinpoints of light in his lean face. Everything in his stance screamed 'Come near me and I'll pick up the nearest blunt instrument and beat you to death with it, motherfucker! Come on, try me, I dare you...', and it frightened the absolute shit out of Draco. He took an involuntary step backward.

Harry's eyes lit with triumph. He took a step nearer. "Fail to answer me and I'll kill you where you stand, Malfoy," he said in an ominous sort of tone. "Don't think I won't."

Draco eyed him speculatively. "Well, what is this about, then?" he said with no little confusion colouring his words. "Here I am, minding my own business and sleeping like the innocent child I am when you come barging in, shrieking like a banshee -"

"Shut the fuck up, Draco," Harry murmured icily.

Draco shut the fuck up. For a second, anyway, but then his damned ungovernable tongue started talking without asking his brain: "Well, spit it out, Potter. I haven't got all d -"

Draco found himself pinned against the wall by a very strong hand which had attached itself to his throat rather forcibly. Breathing suddenly became somewhat difficult. Apparently that will happen when someone compresses your trachea.

"I'm here," Harry said evenly, "For answers. And I will be satisfied. Get me?"

Draco was turning blue. He nodded fervently.

Harry released him, but Draco didn't move away from the wall. His eyes were fixated on Harry, like a mouse watching a cobra dance before its paralysed eyes -- wanting to run but completely incapable of movement. Fatal attraction or something equally improbable. 

"I want to know," Harry went on in that same slow, flat voice, "Exactly what game you think you're playing." Payback be damned for the moment, he wanted answers first.

Draco made a moue of incomprehension.

"For the past month, I have gone through absolute fucking hell because of you. I have suffered, Draco, just the way you wanted. God, how I've suffered. I've suffered through things you can't even imagine, Malfoy, and I've borne it because I thought I had a chance of proving myself to you. And then last night, just as I finally gave up all the pride I had left and told you I wanted you, you left me. God, is there no depths to your hatred for me? Do you really despise me that fucking much? To make me want you and need you and fucking beg you and then leave me there like that? How could you?" For a second, Harry's face was completely, nakedly vulnerable.

Draco stared at him silently, astounded by the depths of Harry's misunderstanding. Didn't the boy realise that Draco had sacrificed everything last night just to make sure that Harry didn't lose the stupid fucking bet?

The ice-cold mask slid back across Harry's features. He continued, "You won, Draco. You broke me." He closed the gap between them and began to murmur menacingly, "And I'm not leaving here until I know why. I want you to tell me why you hate me so badly. I want you to tell me what you meant last night when you said you 'couldn't do it'. I want you to explain to me exactly what you think you are doing, fucking with me like this. Because, so help me Draco, if you don't, I am going to pull out your spinal cord and use it for tooth floss."

Draco's mouth tightened at the visual.

"I don't owe you any explanations, Potter," he spat. "I don't owe you anything."

"You owe me more than you can ever repay, Draco Malfoy. More than you'll ever know," Harry returned with a soap-opera-esque glare into the distance, his eyes then flickering to lock with the icy grey ones of the Slytherin.

"Really?" Draco drawled, drawing it out into several syllables and sounding just a bit demented in the process. "Here's me thinking I did you a favour last night. Remind me again why it is that you're angry about the fact that I stopped anything from happening and in so doing saved you from a thousand galleon payout?"

"See now that's what's pissing me off the most, Malfoy. Why the fuck would you do something like that?" Harry asked, his anger rising to the surface. Why wouldn't the little prat just stop playing games? What was he hiding?

Harry advanced, still speaking in a dead flat tone of voice that boded very, very ill for Draco's health. "Why would you sacrifice your own money and gratification for mine? Why would you make any kind of unselfish gesture when it goes against every part of your sodding awful nature? I know you had money on yesterday. Why would you give up all that profit?"

"I don't need your small change," Draco said flippantly, tossing his blonde forelock with affected casualness. Harry was very close, and Draco could smell the hot anger mixing with the spicy scent of cologne and aftershave and yummy Harry smell that made his senses reel.

"And why," Harry murmured, closing in on Draco further, making the other boy cringe away a little, "Would you push me away when every single molecule of your body was alive with wanting me last night? You think I couldn't tell? You wanted me as much as I wanted you. Why would you do that?"

"Maybe I changed my mind! Maybe I decided that shagging you wasn't such a sodding great idea after all!" Draco shouted.

"WHY?!" Harry shouted back in his face.

"Did it ever occur to you, Harry, that maybe I felt BAD about what I was doing to you? Fuck knows when, but somewhere along the fucking line I grew a God-damned conscience, and as a direct consequence, I found myself unable to play out a hand that I'd been working on for the better part of a year!! And if you think that fact doesn't piss me off royally, you are severely mistaken. However, it doesn't change the fact that I couldn't go through with it because I couldn't stand to see you suffer at my hands anymore!" Draco was huffing by the time he was through with that particular monologue.

"Why?" Harry asked again, his voice wavering.

"BECAUSE!" Draco shouted, flushing in hot pink slashes across his beautiful cheekbones.

"Because WHY?" Harry bellowed back.

"I love you! That's fucking why!" Draco hollered, and then clapped his hand over his mouth as if he couldn't believe what he had just said.

Harry looked at him meditatively. Then he exploded. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?! Even now, you'll do anything to win this bet, won't you?! Just when I think you can sink no fucking lower you go and pull that shit on me?! What the fuck am I supposed to do, Malfoy?! I can't fight you when you don't play fair! I just can't fight you anymore!"

Harry shoved Draco back against the wall and for just a second, Draco knew with absolute certainty that Harry was going to kill him. All bets were well and truly off. Goodbye world, Draco thought hysterically as Harry's hands hit his throat.

Harry watched Draco for the briefest of moments.

And then he kissed him.

And that was it.

Everything broke into a thousand pieces. Because it was the most soul-shattering thing that either boy had ever experienced. Because it was more than a kiss, it was an everything. Because it was beautiful and hurtful and terrifying and intense, and it shouldn't be happening but - Oh God - it was happening, and there was nothing anyone could do about it because it was so wrong and so right and too much and so badly not enough that it hurt like hell. And because it was the beginning of an ending that should have been impossible, and yet suddenly wasn't.

It was a raving, beautiful bitch of a kiss.

And suddenly nothing mattered to Harry. Not the bet, not the world. Nothing mattered because Draco Malfoy was moaning into his mouth, and Draco Malfoy's tongue was dancing against his own, and Draco Malfoy's lips were softer than a kitten's belly and felt like absolutely nothing else on Earth.

They kissed and kissed and kissed and kissed. Hot and feverish and sweet and wet, it was a brutal, beautiful, voluptuous thing of sensate pleasure and absolute intensity. Harry drew Draco's lower lip between his teeth and the blonde groaned in pleasurable agony, until Harry took pity on him and soothed with his tongue, finally slanting his lips across the other boy's and kissing him properly. His heart was pounding in his chest, and then Draco's tongue moved across his own and he was certain his heart stopped working altogether and he didn't care because - oh GOD - what a way it was to go...

Harry moved his hands away from Draco's throat and down his arms, caught the Slytherin's hands in his own and intertwined their fingers with aching sweetness. He pushed Draco's arms gently against the wall, and Draco used the leverage to inch his hot, hard body up against the entire length of Harry's. Their mouths were forced apart as they gasped at the sudden contact. Harry shuddered against Draco and his hips slid involuntarily into the other boy's. Draco closed his eyes and his head tipped back against the wall at the sheer pleasure of it. Surely nothing ever felt this good, he thought in rapture. So goddamned good...

And then he didn't think anymore, because Harry had decided to take advantage of his momentary inattention and position to glide soft lips and tongue across his cheekbone to his ear and that spot right there behind the lobe that was definitely connected to every nerve ending in his entire body because once Harry touched his mouth to it there was absolutely no going back or around or any-which-way.

"Harry," he groaned softly and felt the other boy smile against his neck.

Harry didn't trust himself to say a word. Payback seemed to have died a horrible death. Odd the way that happens when one is presented with the far more attractive option of seduction, isn't it? He moved his mouth down to the strong column of Draco's throat and slid a hot, wet tongue into the hollow at the base of it, making Draco shiver and whimper softly.

Harry started unbuttoning Draco's sleep-rumpled shirt with his teeth and instead of doing what any normal boy or girl would do and enjoying it, the little voice that was Draco's newfound conscience woke up. Fuck, Draco thought with a mixture of irritation and panic. The voice persisted. Should you really be letting him do this? it asked. What if this is just some game? What if he's only doing it because you've pushed him too far for too long and he really doesn't feel anything at all...?

Shut UP, Draco thought at the sodding little nagger. But it wouldn't go away. Like relatives at Christmas. Who CARES if he feels anything? Harry Potter is - OH GOD - devouring my collarbone and he FINALLY wants me so why are you trying to fuck things up by worrying about what he FEELS?! God, what is WRONG with you?!

But the voice kept whinging. If you really loved him, you'd give him a chance to think about this, it groused. You forced him into this. Maybe you aren't what he wants at all.

Draco went cold.

And then he pushed Harry away.

It felt like the world ended.

They stood there a second, looking at each other with identical expressions filled with want and need and love and hate and fear and pleasure and panic, gasping for air, hands still entwined and bodies absolutely vibrating with longing.

Draco pulled his hands away from Harry's and placed one of them flat on Harry's heaving chest, closing his eyes for a moment at the heat invoked by that simple touch. "We can still stop this, Harry," he whispered like a man in agony, which, funnily enough, he was.

Harry looked at him without comprehension. His mouth was flushed and swollen from Draco's kisses; he ran his tongue hesitantly across his lips and his cheeks glowed hot as he looked right through Draco with feverish eyes that were glittering in the half light. His thick, dark hair fell across his brow to partially obscure his expression, and his chest rose and fell rapidly with his erratic breathing. He was simply the most fuckable thing Draco had ever seen, and it made a physical pain rise in Draco's chest. Jesus, he thought. No wonder he's a Sex God. Just fucking look at him.

"I'll walk away from this if you want me to," Draco continued in a whisper, grey eyes turned black with want. "But... God, Harry, please don't want me to."

Then Harry smiled and Draco couldn't breathe anymore. But that was okay. Who the fuck needs oxygen anyway?

And then Draco suddenly found himself on his back on his tangled sheets, and Harry's mouth was doing absolutely wicked things to the pulse-point at his throat and he found that he couldn't do much of anything at all, because Harry's body was aligned so perfectly with his own, and it felt so damn good and he had waited so damn long and it was so damn right that everything else in the world felt wrong.

 

So while Draco did very little but moan and writhe and clutch pleadingly at various parts of Harry's anatomy, Harry took the opportunity to explore every inch of Draco's body with his tongue, removing clothing as he went. When Draco was finally naked, Harry sat back on his heels for a second and just looked at the smooth, alabaster perfection of Draco's body.

"What?" Draco asked indignantly, when Harry just sighed and kept looking.

"You are..." Harry started, and then found himself quite without words, for Draco had pulled himself up to kneel in front of Harry and claimed his mouth in a hot, sweet, sensuous kiss that was at once completely perfect and absolutely unsatisfying. As he did so, he managed very skilfully to divest Harry of his shirt and trousers, until the other boy was just as naked as he was.

"Gorgeous, I know," Draco smirked arrogantly when he had finished making Harry moan loudly. He pushed the other boy down onto his back and slid his own body across Harry's, relishing the exquisitely pleasurable contact of skin on skin.

As Draco slid his hips into Harry's, Harry flipped them over and attacked Draco's shoulder with his mouth. "I was going to say edible," he murmured seductively.

 

Draco gasped as Harry's mouth found his nipple. "That works for me," he finally ground out, running artistic fingers down the length of Harry's spine and back up into his messy, adorable black hair.

Harry grinned at him. "Me too," he said. He kissed Draco until he was quiet, then he kissed him some more until he was very, very noisy. And he decided, while all this was going on, the Draco Malfoy, whilst writhing and moaning under his expert ministrations, was the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen. Conversely, the image hurt more than it should have, because he couldn't, for the absolute life of him, figure out was how the hell he was going to be content with just one chance to see the blonde this way.

So Harry ignored the little voice in his ear that screamed at him to just 'not do this', and set about making the most of his one opportunity to have Draco Malfoy fall apart in his arms.

* * * *

 

Two hours later, Harry Potter was screaming Draco Malfoy's name as the blonde applied his very clever mouth to very sensitive places on Harry's anatomy. It was debatable who was falling apart in who's arms, in this situation, but for some reason, neither boy could bring himself to give a flying fuck. Harry dragged Draco's mouth to his, unable to tolerate such excesses of sensation for any great length of time, and as Harry's hands slid down to Draco's shaft, the blonde's voice joined Harry's in the quiet of the room, incoherently sobbing out his pleasure on gasped breaths as he ground his hips into Harry's and waited for the world to end.

Then, just as Harry felt his orgasm begin to swoop down upon him like a thousand Dementors in reverse, and Draco found himself similarly stricken, their mouths met as if in a choreographed dance, with Harry sliding one hand into Draco's hair and tightening the other around Draco's shaft. Draco ran his tongue across Harry's and slid one hand down Harry's back to his arse, pulling Harry's straining erection into hard, tight contact with his own and concurrently thrusting his hips into Harry's as if he'd die of the lack.

The sensation was absolutely fucking mind-blowing.

Somewhere in the middle of all this pleasure, the siren went off with an ear-splitting howl. Harry, not entirely coherent at this point, wondered idly if it were the sound of the ambulance coming to take him away because surely he was dying - this feeling of absolute, ravishing pleasure was so utterly improbable that it was possibly fatal. Which was a worry. But then he was coming and he couldn't find it in himself to worry about much of anything, really.

He buried his face in Draco's platinum halo and forgot to breathe.

He felt the slow implosion cleave him apart and turn him inside out and he might've shouted a silent 'I love you' somewhere in there but he didn't really care, because for some reason there was nothing else he'd rather have said, and there was never any choice and that didn't bother him nearly as much as it should have. And why didn't anyone warn him that this was going to be so fucking amazing?!

Harry pulled an unresisting Draco with him to the brink of that absolute, exquisite nowhere and realised there was absolutely no-one he'd rather chase the edge with than the beautiful, cunning prick of a blonde who was slack-jawed and writhing with pleasure beneath him. It was his last coherent thought.

There was a long, eternal instant where both were blinded by orgasmic starburst imprinted upon eyelids like white fire, as their bodies imploded in unison.

And then the world went black.

* * * *

Several minutes later, Harry opened his eyes slowly, the lazy smile of post-coital smugness sliding across his lips quickly erased as the bloody siren started up again. With a slight frown he stretched voluptuously, feeling the delicious ache of apr�s-orgasm pleasure twinge through his muscles. Coming fully alert from his state of catatonic afterglow, Harry caught himself turning his head toward Draco, and stopped.

The blonde beside him was awfully quiet. Harry didn't want to be the first to speak. It was awkward as fuck. But someone had to say something. It's not, after all, every day that two worst enemies end an argument by shagging one-another absolutely sideways. Some words had to be exchanged, if only 'oh dear lord what have I done!?' Or more ominously, 'what are you doing with that flick knife...?'

"Draco?" he finally whispered, the smile sliding southward involuntarily. And now for the after-moment from hell, he thought morosely.

Draco said nothing.

He hates me, Harry thought in sudden panic. He hated it, maybe. Oh GOD, I've lost my touch! Let there be mass suicides among the sixth year virgins! My life is over!

He risked a small glance at the Slytherin, and breathed out a slow breath at what he saw.

Draco was asleep. Harry didn't know whether to be pissed at Draco's lack of stamina, or relieved that he was so exhausted, therefore signifying that Harry had done something more than a Good Job.

In the middle of trying to work it out, Harry became entranced with watching his sleeping lover. And God what a beautiful sight it was. There was a delicate flush across Draco's cheekbones, his silver eyelashes painted crescent moons beneath shadowed lids, the kiss-swollen mouth was slightly parted, the sweat-oiled chest rising and falling softly. Draco was elegant even in repose (the graceful bastard), and he slept like a child, deeply and trustingly, as if he hadn't a care in the world because he was loved and protected and cherished. What Harry didn't know was that this was the first time Draco had ever slept that way. Because it was the first time Draco had ever felt that way. Ever.

Harry felt his heart soften, and was so startled at the feeling he nearly squicked.

Love hurt quite a lot, really. More than one would have suspected given all the fluffy bears and hearts and cupids and squidgy Hallmark cards overflowing with gooey sentimental bollocks that usually went along with it. Harry hadn't expected this raw, hurtful, beautiful beast to have taken up residence in his ribcage, sinking tender claws into his spine and leaving wounds that he suddenly didn't want to ever heal. He hadn't expected the pain or the pleasure, the wild elation and dizzying plummets into agonising, angry depression. Hadn't expected love at all, when you come right down to it.

But no doubt about it, he was in love with Draco Malfoy.

With a bleak expression on his face, Harry stood and started picking up his clothes.

* * * *

A whole lot of people sat around the tally board in a morose sort of post-mortem silence. Gryffindors, Slytherins, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws; all watched the parchment with a morbid fascination, feeling the last minutes of The Bet ticking away, and with it their chances to make considerable fortunes. Still, no-one had been stupid enough to bet on the last day. No point, right? Regardless of the seduction tactic, surely Harry would be able to hang on, knowing he only had a few hours to wait.

There were, in fact, only two names written down for day thirty: anon and anon. A few people looked at them with disinterest, but most just sat and groaned about the horrible unfairness of fate and suchlike.

"I can't believe, after all of this effort and angst and time, not even one of us poor sods actually made any money off this," Ron moaned to Ginny and Hermione as they sprawled on the opulent green and silver rug in front of the fire.

Several other students around them nodded and groaned sympathetically. All of them had lost varying amounts of money to the collective pool. Not one of them had seen, or would see, any reimbursement.

"Who gets the final pool anyway? Is it Draco, or Harry, or Seamus?" Hermione wondered.

"Must be Draco, although I think Seamus must get a cut," Hannah Abbot said, swooning back across her armchair and sighing. "Surely Draco wouldn't give Harry anything. They absolutely loathe one another."

Ron gargled.

After that, the room fell silent.

And then a few very startling things occurred in very quick succession.

Firstly, with a plaintive wail the siren went off. People started looking at each other in shock and confusion.

"What the hell?" Ron squawked, looking for all the world like a goldfish with his mouth opening and shutting in a very unappealing way.

Minutes later, Harry Potter exited Draco Malfoy's room and stalked through the Slytherin common room, still buttoning his jeans and wearing the self-satisfied smirk to end all smirks. He didn't look left or right, nor did he say a single word; he just walked straight by his friends, through the room and out the portrait door.

Ron and Hermione shared a gobsmacked glance.

"What the hell?" said a Ravenclaw boy from his perch on the leather couch. He was looking at the still-swinging portrait as if it were of Harry doing a naked salsa in the foyer of the Ministry of Magic with Professor Sinistra and a large purple sheep.

And seconds after Harry left the room, the parchment started flashing.

Everyone in the room turned identical curious and shocked faces to the board as the anons were slowly morphed into the true names of the bettors.

People stared in shock. Jaws dropped. Eyes widened to extreme proportions. Eyebrows shot up into hairlines. People exclaimed in wonder. People fainted.

"What the hell?" Hermione whispered.

For the first anon had just turned into Harry James Potter.

In the absolute mayhem that followed, no-one thought to look and find out the identity of the second. It was a good thing. School children are too young to die of heart failure.

* * * *

Albus Dumbledore was reclining comfortably in a leather armchair by his office fire when the siren went off, shattering the peace of his Sunday nap.

A smile crept over his face that was quite at odds with the horrible whirring sound.

Still, a man that is suddenly many thousands of galleons richer is entitled to a bit of a grin, no?

"Fawkes, my lad," Dumbledore said cheerfully to the phoenix perched in his lap, "I think perhaps we'll visit Bermuda this year, after all." 

Fawkes squawked with what could have been either approval or an imminent death-cry. It was hard to tell with phoenixes.

Dumbledore stroked his beard musingly.

"I always fancied myself in flowered shorts."

* * * *

Later that evening, Draco awoke slowly and stretched, groaning deliciously as muscles he hadn't even known he possessed protested vigorously. He reached out a hand and found the left side of the bed cold.

He suppressed a sigh.

Draco had known that Harry wouldn't be there. Only God knew why Harry had finally given in to Draco yesterday, but one thing was for sure and for certain - Harry was not going to be happy about it. Draco didn't know when Harry had left; he himself had fallen into a death-like sleep somewhere between the most intense orgasm he'd ever experienced and what potentially could have been the most awkward 'moment after' that anyone had ever experienced.

But that had never come to fruition, because Harry had left.

Draco hadn't expected cuddles and romance, hadn't wanted soft whispered 'I love yous' and talk of forever, sleeping in one-another's arms and waking up together in the morning only to make hot, slow, sweet, sultry love for three days straight. Truthfully, he hadn't known what to want, or what to expect.

But that didn't stop the overwhelming flood of sorrow and disappointment and longing and depression that swept him from tip to toe as he sprawled elegantly on sheets still sticky from sweat and loving.

It hurt like hell.

Suddenly unable to remain still, Draco bounced out of bed and tossed on a robe. As he did though, a flash of white against the emerald silk of his bed covers caught the corner of his vision. He turned slowly, for a second unwilling to cross back to the bed and find out what it was. Then he realised that he had to know, one way or the other.

The innocuous little note, folded on the left-hand pillow, contained an achingly familiar scratchy green scrawl that read:

Draco,

I'll never be able to explain how sorry I am that this was all for show, and that all it was to you was a stupid bet. Because it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Still, I suppose congratulations are in order, because you've won, Draco. You wanted me to suffer, and I promise you that I am. You've finally beaten me at something.

I hope it was worth it.

Unwillingly but unfortunately still yours,

Harry Potter

Newly reinstated Gryffindor Sex God

Underneath the note was a leather bag that chinked loudly in the deathly silence of the room.

Draco knew without looking that it contained exactly one thousand galleons.

He could have wept. But that wasn't very manly, really. So he poured himself an improbably large four fingers of Ogden's, draped himself becomingly over his favourite armchair, and brooded instead.


	11. Epilogue

Harry swanned into breakfast with Jennifer Mews on one arm and Susan Bones on the other, chattering madly to Ron who was walking backwards in front of him and gesturing wildly as he explained some Quidditch theory or other whilst Hermione watched indulgently from the sidelines. The picture was the same as it had always been, as though the entire month of The Bet (or, as Harry privately referred to it, 'The Month in Which the Boy Who Lived NearlyDidn't) had never happened.

Amazing, thought Draco, as he watched with simmering jealousy from the Slytherin table. Just like nothing's changed. He looked down at his hands, unable to bear the sight of his ex-nemesis sashaying about like he was exactly the same as ever when Draco himself felt so profoundly changed. It was fucking unfair really. So he sat there, slowly shredding toast and pondering ways in which he would Get Potter Once and...er, For-Ever, actually. For his private collection. You know, on a purely artistic basis.

Harry sat at the Gryffindor table, indulging Jen's need to feed him strawberries with her mouth, and studiously avoided looking at Draco Malfoy, despite wanting to very, very badly. He felt funny. Just a little off-balance. Like being back to the old Harry Potter Sex God Extraordinaire was wrong or something. Like he had changed. Like he was somehow unsatisfied with the idea of shagging a different person every day. Like he wasn't even himself anymore.

Which sucked, really.

Fucking Malfoy, Harry thought redundantly. This is all his fucking fault.

Funny how quickly things had settled back to normal. Three days was all it had taken for Ron to finally close his wide-open mouth. Three days for Hermione and many, many others to stop sulking about Harry being even richer; for the Ravenclaw girls to forgive his rejection and start trying to shag him again; for Cho Chang to ring and apologise; for Ginny Weasley to do a very big something about Blaise Zabini's famous V; for Professor Trelawney to change back from seductress to bizarre fruit bat hag; for Snape and McGonagall to get over their mutual disappointment, declare mad, passionate love for each other, and run off into the Forbidden Forest, never to be seen or heard from again; for Dumbledore to purchase some really spiffy Hawaiian shorts and decide to wear them, showing a truly terrifying portion of knobbly old knees; and for Draco Malfoy to forget that Harry existed.

Three days is not, after all, particularly long to get over someone you supposedly love.

Fucking fast-rebounding, never-really-loving-at-all, git-faced Slytherin ponce.

Harry, suddenly disgruntled, pushed a surprised Jen away into the arms of a very cheerful Justin Finch-Fletchley at the Ravenclaw table, and tried to start up a conversation with Seamus, who was wrapped around Neville and stealing his breakfast. Apparently the Potions Incident had led to something more where those two were concerned, which was at once surprising and completely expected. Neville, after all, did own leather trousers. Sort of speaks for itself, really.

Still, Harry couldn't help but feel a little twinge of jealously at how happy they looked snuggled together and fighting gleefully over toast. He couldn't actually imagine fighting with Draco Malfoy over something as mundane as toast, but that didn't mean he didn't still want to. It was all very unfair.

Harry turned to Ron and Hermione who were bickering over the fat content of bacon rinds.

"They are not good for you, Ron Weasley," Hermione announced. "They'll make your arteries close and then you'll die." She said this with much relish.

Ron paled. "Bollocks, I've been eating bacon rinds my whole life and there's nothing wrong with me!"

Hermione looked him up and down derisively. "That's a matter for debate."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Ron shouted.

Hermione gave him a superior look. "If you don't know, I'm certainly not going to tell you_"

Harry hated that line. It was another one of those woman-speak things that men just never got.

It briefly appeared as though there would be respite as Ron turned puce and seemed to mull this over.

Then, much to Harry's dismay, the never-knowing-when-to-quit redhead went on, "I don't care anyway."

"Good," Hermione hissed.

"Fine," Ron hissed back.

"Great!"

"Wonderful!"

They were liable to go on like this for hours. Harry, sensing a perfect trouble-making opportunity and wanting an excuse to wipe the superior look off Hermione's face, waited for an opening. Hermione gave it to him when she broke established protocol and said, with greatest scorn and frustration, "Urgh! MEN!"

"Speaking of men..." Harry said with a mischievous grin, "what ever happened with you and that guy, Herm?" He began to innocently fork up his own bacon.

Hermione went very, very still. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Harry..." she said with affected confusion.

"You know, the one you were snogging the night of the Aphrodisiac Potions Incident," Harry said with a wicked smile. He finished with his food and stood, preparing to leave.

"What guy?" Ron asked Harry, who simply smiled and turned away. "What guy?" he repeated to Hermione, who went scarlet.

"Erm..." Hermione said fretfully. "Well...it's quite a long...er, it's sort of like...well, it's kind of involved, really, because..." 

"What guy?!"

Harry grinned as he walked away. Some things, at least, would never change.

* * * *

He was in the library again.

Dead weird, really.

Harry returned The Applied Textbook of Getting Yourself Out of the Shite to its home on the Cunning Plans shelf, and smiled a little nostalgically. That chapter 'How to Win an Unwinnable Bet' had certainly come in mighty useful, he thought complacently. His smile faded. Pity there wasn't a chapter on How To Get Over That Guy You Fell For Whilst Winning Said Unwinnable Bet, his subconscious piped up. Yeah, Harry agreed with it. Pity.

Harry turned from the shelf and found himself looking at an artfully arranged Draco Malfoy, who was oh-so-innocently pulling books off a shelf labelled "General texts, D". Harry didn't stop to appreciate the irony. He was far too busy gawking.

Draco looked up from the volume he held in his hands and started theatrically when his gaze collided with Harry's.

"Oh, hello Potter," he said, trying for suave but missing by an inch or so. "Didn't see you there."

Harry just stared at him, hollow-eyed. The bastard. How could he just stand there, all smug and blonde and gorgeous and unconcerned when Harry was dithering madly between panic, adoration, outright hatred and heartbreaking love, and was certain it was all showing on his face like a black and white art house film.

"Nothing to say?" Draco asked, a little miffed at Harry's lack of reaction. Why wasn't he saying something? "Quite possibly a first, methinks."

"Did you just say 'methinks'?" Harry asked, bemused. God he wanted to kiss him.

"What're you reading?" Draco asked quickly, just to have something to say. God he wanted to push Harry against the nearest shelf and shag him senseless.

"Nothing," Harry said quickly, shoving 'Getting Yourself Out of the Shite' behind him. "You?" 

"Nothing," Draco grinned, hiding his own book in his charcoal-coloured robes.

"You pulled it off the D shelf," Harry pointed out. "Sure it isn't something like Disgusting Rashes and How to Treat Them? I've been told it's one of your favourites..."

Draco sneered. "Surely if I had some kind of fungal problem, you'd've pointed it out to me when you decided to map every inch of my body with your tongue three days ago," he said with a sexy pout.

Harry gaped, gobsmacked. Did he just say that out loud? he thought. What happened to pretending nothing happened?

Did I just say that out loud? Draco thought in panic. Time to change tack. "I read your note," he said quietly.

Harry looked away, embarrassed. "Yeah, well," he said dismissively. "I was still bitter at that point. I'm over it."

Draco watched his face. "You sure?" he asked, holding his breath. "It was quite an informative sort of missive. You didn't mean any of it?"

Harry looked up. "No," he lied unconvincingly.

Draco tried to hide his disappointment. "Shame," he said.

"Look, Malfoy...." Harry said suddenly. "What is it that you want? I don't really have time to dick around with you here all day, you know. Things to do, people to see, girls to screw, etcetera etcetera. The life of a Sex God isn't all roses and afterglow you know."

Draco held back a snort by the upmost force of will. "Did you enjoy spending your many thousands of galleons?" he asked instead, ignoring Harry's previous hurry-along.

"Did you enjoy spending your own thousand?" Harry returned, also forgetting that he had other things to do.

"I thought I might use it to launch my own line of hair-care products," Draco said idiotically, staring at Harry with a mixture of adoration and exasperation.

"I'm shocked," Harry said, deadpan.

"I'm in love with you," Draco returned in exactly the same tone of voice.

"That isn't funny," Harry said angrily.

"I'm not really a very funny person, though, am I?" Draco returned with sudden earnestness.

Harry looked at him in silence for a very, very long time. He was terrified of what he read in Draco's suddenly sincere grey eyes, because it was exactly what he wanted to see, and that scared him more than anything ever had.

Disconcerted, Draco felt compelled to speak. "Am I?" he asked again, pushing, hoping for...anything from the other boy. Something. Anything other than a blank stare and a lot of incomprehensible thought processes.

"Bit of an odd thing to say, then," Harry finally said musingly.

"You've no idea, Harry Potter, just how queer I can be," Draco smiled mischievously.

"I wouldn't say no idea," Harry replied with a smirk. "I did manage to get that impression at some point."

 

He continued very slowly, the beginnings of a grin starting on his lean, handsome face, "A very odd thing to say. Not a lot of charm there, either."

"Sorry," Draco replied unrepentantly, gazing into lost green eyes with something akin to desperation.

"A bit forward, really. Maddeningly overbearing. Completely arrogant. Certainly a taint of vanity and pride to it also. Quite a prickish sort of thing to say, really. Bit like the person who said it, I suppose," Harry continued blithely.

Draco gaped.

"Cute though," Harry said, a full smile breaking across his face and lighting his eyes up in a way that made Draco want to weep.

"Cute?" Draco asked incredulously. "Cute?!"

"Definitely cute," Harry agreed.

Draco looked dumbfounded. "How about suave...sexy, even...or perhaps, more appropriately, absolutely gorgeous...? I'll even settle for edible..."

"I'm gonna stick with cute, thanks," Harry smirked adorably.

Draco pouted. "I am not cute."

"Actually, you sort of are," Harry said conspiratorially, as if imparting a great national secret.

"Sort of?" Draco asked, refusing to be placated.

"In a very edible sort of way," Harry whispered. He was very close now, and Draco could feel the heat of his brown skin, smell the delicious scent of his aftershave, and he couldn't help but step closer and slide his body into Harry's with a very small groan.

"So I take this to mean," Draco said with a little gasp, as Harry ran gentle fingers through his platinum hair and pushed him against the shelves, "that you aren't entirely adverse to the idea of being loved by a Misbegotten Spawn of Evil?"

"Not really," Harry whispered into Draco's mouth, and touched a soft kiss to his upper lip.

Draco moaned.

"That's assuming, of course, that you don't absolutely hate the idea of being loved by the Boy Who Lived," Harry continued, ignoring the bewildered, incredulous expression of elation that crossed Draco's face. "I am, after all, scourge of dark wizards everywhere. Imagine taking me home to your family. I might try to off them all...Can't really be trusted. I seem to have this pressing need to get my wand off."

Draco laughed. He soon stopped as Harry slid his oh-so-interested pelvis into Draco's. "So I see," Draco replied archly.

Harry looked at him seriously. "You're a Slytherin," he stated without inflection, but it was a warning nonetheless.

Draco looked bored. "Yes, and you're a Gryffindor." He gave a theatrical shudder that was belied by the grin on his face. "Barely housebroken...Still, I'm sure we'll manage to get past that small obstacle."

"Oh yeah?" Harry asked.

"You'll just have to sleep outside," Draco drawled with a straight face.

Harry considered this. "All on my lonesome?" he finally asked, stroking a hand down Draco's chest in a most inviting manner.

"Perhaps not," Draco replied quickly.

Harry raised an eyebrow.

"Well, there's always the floor," Draco continued blithely.

Harry corpsed with laughter.

"We are so fucking wrong for each other, Draco Malfoy," Harry groaned helplessly into Draco's neck, and then started touching hot, sweet kisses to his throat and collarbone.

Draco pulled his head away and looked at Harry seriously. Then one of those once-a-millennium, breathtaking smiles broke out across his beautiful features and Harry forgot how to breathe.

"That's what makes it so damn great," he said, and kissed Harry with so much force and want and love and aching, aching need that Harry felt his heart break apart in his chest and it was the most astonishing thing he had ever experienced. There's something about this Malfoy boy, he thought irrelevantly. Seems to have an uncanny ability to make me squick. Dead annoying, that.

"Only 'great'?" Harry gasped indignantly when Draco pulled back for air.

Draco grinned sexily as Harry started to explore his ear with his tongue. "Exceptional?" he said. "Fantastic maybe?...oh, right there....absolutely fucking brilliant....umm...utterly and completely amazing?"

"That the best you can do? You're resorting to multiple adjectives..."

"There are no words..." Draco trailed off as Harry claimed his mouth again.

"Well, perhaps you'd better show me instead," Harry invited mockingly, with a sexy smirk.

Draco quickly reversed their positions, so Harry was the one shoved against the shelves, and proceeded to do just that. In the ensuing commotion, which involved a serious snog, a screech from Madame Pince, a whole lot of running and laughing and then a whole lot more snogging, Draco's book fell to the floor, unnoticed. Its gold etched title pronounced it to be Dating the Enemy - What to Do When You're in Love with the One You Hate.

Well, at least it wasn't Disgusting Rashes and How to Treat Them.

That would've just been gross.

FIN.

**Author's Note:**

> Original work was by Allegra on HP fanfiction.


End file.
